“What?” I asked.
“That’s what you said when you first came to,” she replied with a dismissive shake of her head. “Brittany. No head.”
The biting pain in the back of my neck suddenly made all the sense in the world.
Just as it had happened with Felicity, the vision had faded away as quickly as it had come, and I didn’t even remember uttering the words. In the wake of everything that had happened over the course of the evening, this was actually the first time it had even been mentioned.
I wasn’t at all surprised that Felicity didn’t understand what the comment meant because I hadn’t told her what Ben had confided in me earlier in the day. But, I knew full well what the words implied, and so did Ben and Constance.
My friend slowly moved his hand aside and stared at me. I just stared back.
“You sure that’s what he said?” he finally asked without turning.
“Positive,” she replied. “Do you know what it means?”
“It means we have a serial killer who just claimed a third victim,” Constance announced flatly.
“Hey you three,” Felicity said. “I’m obviously not blonde, but maybe I’m having a moment here. A little help, then?”
“Tamara Linwood and Sarah Hart.” Ben explained, “Both corpses were found minus their heads.”
“Oh Gods…” she murmured softly.
“The initial theory on Hart was that it might have been due to predation,” Constance offered. “But then the medical examiner found seven grooved striations on the posterior of the remaining C-six vertebrae. The tool marks lab matched them to a manual hacksaw, most likely with a fourteen TPI bi-metal blade.”
“Good memory,” Ben said. “I didn’t know you were on that case.”
“I wasn’t.” She shook her head. “It came up as an NCIC match when we ran Larson’s abduction profile. Secluded parking lot, missing twenty-something-year-old woman, etcetera.”
“And you got all that from a NCIC hit?”
“Not all of it.” She shrugged. “I had a few minutes this morning, so I read the file.”
Ben raised an eyebrow and looked back at her incredulously. “And you remembered all that?”
“Well sure,” she replied.
“Jeezus, Mandalay, you’re almost as weird as these two.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment, Storm.”
“Well, I hate ta’ say it, but we still got another problem,” he ventured.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“We got no way to prove any of this stuff about Larson is true.”
“Unless we can find the body,” I offered.
“That’s a big ‘unless’, Rowan,” Constance expressed.
“What’re ya’ thinkin’ white man?” Ben queried. “You got that hinky look goin’ on.”
“I’m thinking that I obviously saw something while I was ‘under’ so to speak,” I explained. “So maybe I saw more than just the ‘no head’ thing.”
“Yeah, but apparently you didn’t even remember that, so how are you gonna remember anything else?”
“It’s a long shot, but…”
“NO.” Felicity’s austere voice cut me off.
“What?” Ben turned his head and asked her. “Was he gettin’ ready to say he wanted to do somethin’ stupid?”
“Yes,” she replied, her tone still harsh.
“How do you know what I was going to say?” I asked, slightly annoyed.
“She’s married to ya’, Kemosabe,” Ben huffed with almost a note of pained disgust in his voice. “She knows everything. Even what yer gonna say next.”
I sped immediately into an explanation, hoping to overshadow his words and more importantly, his tone. “I was only going to recommend we do a regression.”
“Like a past life thing?” Constance asked. “Hypnosis?”
“Similar,” I nodded as I answered her. “But instead of past life, I’d just be going to a previous point in my own.”
“Breugadair,” my wife spat, resorting to a Gaelic epithet for liar. “Someone else’s death is what you mean.”
“We don’t have much choice in the matter,” I contended.
“Rowan, not an hour ago your heart stopped beating for almost two minutes.”
“DO WHAT?!” Ben exclaimed, whipping his gaze back around to me.
“You were still passed out,” I explained quickly. “Besides, she’s making it out to be worse than it is.”
“I am not,” she defended herself.
“Yer fuckin’ heart stopped?” Ben pressed.
“Not according to the paramedics,” I said.
“Paramedics?” he exclaimed. “Jeezus H. Christ! What the hell else did I miss?”
“Rowan,” Constance said, ignoring Ben’s query. “Maybe Felicity is right.”
“It’s not as dangerous as she’s wanting you two to believe,” I appealed.
“All right. Fine.” Felicity leveled her determined gaze directly on me and pushed away from the counter as she announced, “Then how about if I do it.”
CHAPTER 16:
Talking myself into corners was something I excelled at on various occasions. Most especially when it came to trying to convince my wife that I was prepared to handle anything the ethereal world could throw at me. Of course, over the past few years she had seen more than her share of my experiences with such, and she knew better than to believe me. Therefore, it always took some creative explaining to convince her otherwise; or try to at least, because as of late, invariably I would lose the verbal scuffles.
So, getting into the corner was easy. Escaping from it once I found myself pinned was definitely something at which I needed more practice. As it happened, this was rapidly becoming a perfect opportunity for just such an experience. Since my back was now so firmly pressed into the metaphorical niche that it was beginning to take on a similar angular shape, I had nothing to lose by trying.
I blurted the second thing that came to mind, “No way.”
I chose the second thing to pop into my head because the first phrase was more along the lines of, ‘it’s too dangerous.’ Quite obviously, echoing my wife’s very sentiment would have been equivalent to surrendering my king before the first pawn had been moved. I already wasn’t sure that I was going to be able to talk myself out of this one, but I wasn’t going to simply give up. I knew my response was less than inspired, but my creative juices were failing me miserably at the moment. Still, I charged ahead, making a bid to break free of the ‘rock and a hard place’ of my own making.
“Why?” Felicity asked coolly and then baited me with, “Because it’s too dangerous?”
“No. Because it wouldn’t do any good,” I told her. “You didn’t see the things that I saw.”
“How do you know that?” she asked, crossing her arms beneath her breast. “Neither one of us can remember anything except what the other one said.”
“Right,” I agreed. “And you didn’t mention anything about her being headless.”
She arched her eyebrows as she gave her head a slight shake. “So?”
“So I must have seen more than you did.”
“Oh come on,” she exclaimed. “You don’t buy into that any more than I do.”
Ben voiced his own observation. “Jeezzz, Row, even I know that’s a lame argument.”
“You aren’t helping,” I returned.
“Look,” Constance spoke up. “I don’t know as much about this as you two do or even Storm for that matter…”
“Hey, you see a broom between my legs?” Ben objected. “Leave me outta this.”
“…What I’m trying to ask,” she continued, glossing over his interruption. “Is that if it’s dangerous for Rowan wouldn’t it be dangerous for you too, Felicity?”
“Not as much,” she replied.
All bids to get myself out of the corner were immediately null and void. I knew the next words out of my mouth would sabotage my own argument, but I was unable to keep myself from calling Felicity on her comment.
“Okay, so who’s blowing smoke now?” I chided.
“All I did was pass out, Rowan,” she asserted. “My heart didn’t come to a screeching halt like yours did.”
“Will you get off that? The paramedics told you I was fine.”
“Aye, they did,” she shot back. “But I didn’t believe it then, and I don’t believe it now.”