Zach stiffened. “Why?”
“Because I have to do everything I can to prevent this murder.”
“Grace, you can’t save the world.”
“I’m just trying to save Dolores.”
“Maybe she’s beyond saving.”
His gaze bore into her as if he were searching for her soul. She pulled the robe tighter around her. She didn’t want him to see her. But if he could see into her soul, maybe he’d believe her. And then maybe he’d run screaming from her like so many men. “That’s not nice to say.”
“I don’t mean to sound that way, but I’m tired of Dolores and her messes.”
“Especially the baby?”
His jaw line softened. “No, that may be a good thing.”
“Even if it isn’t yours?”
“It is, Grace.”
He stepped away from the door. An impulse had words streaming out of her mouth. “Zach, tomorrow at ten a thunderstorm will roll through here.”
“You the weather man now? The forecast called for sunny skies. A little humidity.”
“There’ll be a storm. If it comes through will you help me?”
“I’ll try, Grace, I’ll try.”
Zach stood by the window across the room from his desk. His watch read, “10:03.” Sure enough a storm was now tap dancing through Glen Hills. “Damn.”
When he’d told Grace he’d help her he never expected to make good on that promise. Now he owed her an apology.
Ignoring his case load and the blinking answering machine, he grabbed his suit jacket and went down the street to the hospital as soon as the storm left town. Grace and her partner had just come in from a call and she looked a little ragged.
“Tough one?”
She nodded, her eyes hollow.
He walked her to the cafeteria for coffee. She moved through the hallway as if in a daze. “Yeah. We should have saved her. We did last time.”
“Last time?”
Grace put a hand over her mouth as if she’d said something she shouldn’t. Shaking her head she said, “Never mind.”
Silence for a few steps. Then her gaze traveled back to his. “The storm. You’re going to help me.”
He frowned, but didn’t respond until they had settled at a table with coffee. “I guess I have to.”
Her finger traced a line around the outside of the cup. “Not if you don’t want to.”
Her tired voice struck him and he wanted to hold her for a moment. Not an affectionate person by nature, his reaction to her puzzled him.
“It’s going to happen tonight. I feel it. I took a half day. I’ll leave when we get the truck back in order.”
“And then what will you do?”
“Stay with Dolores.”
“She’ll be at work.”
This small woman couldn’t possibly protect Dolores. Besides, his ex-wife wouldn’t want to be protected. She was just that way. He knew that well enough. She turned on and off the fragility like a faucet.
“I’ll be there when she gets home.”
“You are not making any sense.”
“I realize that. You just have to believe me. Can you have a patrol car go by a few times this afternoon?”
“I can pull some strings, call in a favor or two, but not for no reason.”
“Unofficially?”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thanks.”
She shifted sideways in the booth her eyes closing. Her hair, pulled back in a pony tail, was trying to escape the band. She finished her coffee in a gulp. “I better get back.”
Dolores’ car was in her driveway when Grace arrived home. Not a good sign. During the ride home, Grace wondered why Dolores hadn’t lost the baby this time. Why were things going in a different order?
Something niggled at the edge of her brain, but she couldn’t catch it. If she could see it, she knew she’d have the answer.
She knocked on the back door, not even bothering to go up to her apartment first.
“Oh, Grace, hello.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m just feeling under the weather. I’d invite you in, but I’m about to go down for a nap.”
Grace flashed to her vision of Dolores bleeding on the bathroom floor. “Are you bleeding?”
“Why would you ask that?”
She shook her head. “Just curious. You look pale.”
“Just fatigue. Too much gardening. How about I come over when I wake up,” Dolores said.
Grace nodded and backed down the steps, her instincts screaming for her to stay. The sun had gone behind a large dark cloud and she expected it would rain again. She couldn’t sit out in the yard. She needed to be in Dolores’ house.
Her mind reeling from the complications, Grace went up to her apartment. Mark sat at her kitchen table, devouring a burger.
“How’d you get in?”
She dropped her keys on the counter, then plopped her tired body into the chair opposite him.
“Your landlady let me in.”
“Why are you here?”
“I was hoping you’d know that.”
She snorted. “I don’t know anything this time.”
“This time? Why is it different?”
“Don’t know, but you said something about the butterfly effect.”
“Yeah? I’m pretty deep when I’m toasted.”
“Why did you show up here, drunk?”
“Because I feel as if we have unfinished business, Gracie.”
She stood and paced away from him. “I don’t feel about you the way you feel about me. Life would be simple if I did. Jeez, you’re the only one who knows about my thing.”
Unable to categorize her power as a gift, she’d never decided on a label.
Mark patted the table beside his plate. “Join me and tell me how it was last time.”
***
Zach maintained the speed limit to Dolores’ house, but just.
The sky had cleared, but the air still held the scent of a storm. Maybe Grace could tell him if there would be another one soon. Then he could plan a picnic.
Pulling into Dolores’ driveway he knew her car would be there. He’d already called her at work and they told him she’d gone home, sick.
Grace rushed up to him, with Mark on her heels. This guy was spending too much time with her.
“Zach, she isn’t answering.”
“I have a key.”
His heart stopped when he saw Dolores in a pool of blood. Her bathroom reeked of death, but her chest still rose in shallow breaths.
Grace commanded Mark to dial 9-1-1, while she knelt by Dolores. “I have a pulse, but it’s thready.”
“She shot?”
“No, I think she’s hemorrhaging. Maybe she lost the baby.”
Zach blinked for a moment. His heart ached for the child that wouldn’t be. Then he went back to cop mode, analyzing the scene clinically. “Why didn’t she call?”
“Maybe she woke up this way.”
“On the floor?”
“No, bleeding. She was under the weather when I saw her. She was going to take a nap.”
A siren wailed in the distance, a welcome sound to Zach’s ears. “Move,” he said.
“Leave her. They’re almost here.”
He shoved Grace out of the way, then scooped up Dolores. She hung limp in his arms and she had the coppery smell of blood about her. He raced to meet the ambulance at the driveway.
Without waiting for the crew to roll out the cot, Zach climbed into the ambulance, then laid Dolores on the white sheets. Grace appeared and gave a report to the medics.
“Can I stay here?” he asked.
The gloved medic nodded, not looking up from Dolores. The doors closed and someone patted it. The ambulance moved with sirens blaring.
Chapter Sixteen
Mark drove Grace to the hospital. She leapt out of the car just before he stopped it, then went to find Zach.
He paced the hallway outside a curtained room in the emergency room. If his shoulders were any more slumped, he’d have been walking on them.
“Zach?”
He pulled her into his arms most likely for his own comfort. Colors swirled in front of her, but she kept on her feet. He needed her now. Despite the kaleidoscope in her head she clung to his voice to stay conscious.
“Grace, she lost the baby.”