“Clerk heard the shot and called nine-one-one.”
“So the killer didn’t have very long to get away,” she mused.
“Somewhere between ten and fifteen minutes, best guess,” he explained. “She hesitated to make the call for something like five to ten minutes, she’s not for sure. Then response for a unit was right at six minutes.”
“Not much time,” I mused.
My friend grunted then reached up to massage his neck as he said, “Yeah, well, apparently it was enough.”
CHAPTER 8:
“Do you want to grab some breakfast?” I asked.
“What?” Felicity replied, looking over at me as she downshifted the Jeep.
We were only a few blocks from home at this point. Ben was still wrapping things up back at the crime scene, but for the time being, my wife’s part in the investigation was done-her official involvement anyway.
There was no doubt that something unnatural was already hard at work, and it had every intention of dragging both of us back into the middle of the entire mess. The intensity of the feeling was actually enough to make one feel claustrophobic, and that made me more than just a little nervous.
I had no choice but to wonder what, or who, was pulling the strings. Especially when my friend finally sent us on our way, and it became obvious that we weren’t the only ones who could feel it. He had gone so far as to hedge the dismissal with a promise to contact us later in the day if he had any questions. I wouldn’t have thought anything of the comment if it weren’t for the fact that I could tell simply by the way he spoke the words that even he wasn’t sure why he’d said them. That in itself told me he knew something was going on as well, even if only subconsciously.
Still, the aberration thus far was that there were none of the usual signs. No psychic flashes, no preternatural headaches, and not even a hint of ethereal contact from the victim. There was no apparent reason for us to be involved other than the emergency photographic services Felicity had provided. Even so, it felt like a foregone conclusion that we were now connected to this crime in some vastly deeper way. For the life of me though, I had absolutely no clue what that connection could be.
“Breakfast,” I repeated. “We could hit the Corner Coffee House. I’ll buy.”
She gave her head a slight shake. “Maybe later. Aren’t you still queasy?”
“Unfortunately, no,” I replied, sincere in my words. “I’m afraid my tolerance for the horrific is back in full. I am a little tired though. What about you?”
“No.”
“No what?”
She shook her head again and spoke absently, “No. Not queasy then.”
“Well, you’ve got to be tired. You’re running on only about an hours sleep.”
“Hmmmm?”
“Tired. You’ve got to be tired.”
“Not really.”
“Okay,” I replied, giving a nod in her direction. “So what’s on your mind?”
“What?”
“Yo, Earth to Felicity,” I said, reaching over and poking her in the shoulder with my index finger. “Would you like to fill me in on what’s going on here? You’re completely scattered, and I find it really hard to believe you aren’t tired. Is something wrong?”
“No… I don’t think…” she replied hesitantly. “Oh, I don’t know.”
“Now you’re sounding like me,” I told her. “What is it?”
I twisted in my seat and watched her through a long pause. I could see that she was struggling with something, and the aura surrounding her was one of intense frustration.
“That room…” she finally said after finishing the turn onto our street and accelerating down the block.
“What about it?”
“The feeling…” she murmured. “I… I just can’t shake it.”
“You mean the lack of fear?”
“No, not that. The sex.”
“Oh,” I replied, slightly taken aback.
I had been affected by that aura myself but for the most part, only while inside the room. Once outside the feeling had rapidly diminished, and after we had left the premises, it had disappeared entirely. But, apparently the same wasn’t so for my wife, and that worried me.
For a moment I started wondering if my earlier SpellCraft simply wasn’t good enough to keep her from harm. But, that tinge of panic didn’t last long. I knew full well that I’d gone to great lengths constructing the spell, weaving it only to keep her safe, not to cut her off from the ethereal entirely. So, it stood to reason that she could still be overly sensitive to myriad other energies. Besides, sensing and channeling positive energies shouldn’t be harmful. And, sexual arousal probably qualified as positive, or at least that’s what one would think.
I immediately abandoned my mental analysis and grabbed for the dashboard out of self-preservation as my wife whipped the vehicle into a hard right, squealing the tires and tearing into our driveway at a higher rate of speed than I considered advisable. She immediately accelerated out of the rapid turn and barreled up the concrete expanse through the open gate and brought us to a sudden halt directly in front of the garage. The Jeep lurched as she jammed the gearshift into first and let the clutch out even before she managed to switch off the engine.
I eyed her wordlessly for a second then opened my mouth briefly before deciding not to chance a comment on the fact that I knew she was a far better driver than she’d just demonstrated. Of course, all I saw was the back of her head as she was climbing out of the vehicle, almost before she’d extracted the key from the ignition. I simply gave a mental shrug then twisted around in my seat to reach for the camera bags. She turned back to close her door and looked at me with an intense fire behind her green eyes.
“Aye, leave them,” she instructed, her tone harbored no room for negotiation. “Just go inside and get undressed.”
When I stared back at her, almost dumbfounded, she added, “Right now.”
I wasn’t entirely sure if what I was hearing was a demand, a plea, or something born of both.
The door chime rang out for the second time, setting the dogs into a repeat of the frenzy it had brought about on the first go around. The deep-throated woof of our aging English setter again formed a bass backdrop to the snarling bark of our Australian cattle dog as they vociferously stood watch over their territory. Whoever was out there, however, wasn’t easily frightened away it seemed, and that told me it was probably Ben.
“We need to answer the door,” I told my wife.
“No we don’t,” she breathed into my ear. “Whoever it is will go away.”
“They haven’t yet,” I replied.
“They will,” she purred.
She was astride me in the bed, body pressing down against mine as she continued to nuzzle at my neck. Her dainty hands encircled my wrist, and she held my arms in place over my head and down against the pillow. Of course, she wasn’t strong enough to actually keep me pinned without quite a bit more leverage than her current position offered. Even so, she was demonstrating more strength than I expected, and she was definitely making it difficult for me to move. That simple fact seemed to delight her in ways I couldn’t begin to describe. Apparently, something about exercising dominance and control had become a focal point for her arousal, and she wasn’t about to let it go.
She’d been all over me the moment we got into the house. I hadn’t even had the chance to “get undressed” as she had told me to do, and in fact, I wasn’t certain I would be able to find all of the buttons she’d managed to rip from my shirt when she’d descended upon me. That had been sometime around eight-thirty this morning, and she hadn’t let up since-not that I’d been able to keep up with her by any stretch of the imagination. Truth be told, what was certainly an adolescent boy’s dream come true, was for me rapidly becoming a real problem.