I thought I’d feel pain, but I don’t. I feel numb. And then I hear Mitchell yelling my name. Is he dead, too? No, he can’t be. He wasn’t even in the cemetery with me.
I open my eyes to see Mitchell cuffing Sam on the ground in front of me. There’s blood, but it’s not mine. It’s Sam’s. “How?” I ask in disbelief.
Sam is cringing, but he’s managing not to cry out in pain despite the fact that there’s a bullet in his shoulder. I rush forward and press my palm to the wound.
“Trying to read a dying man? That’s low, Piper,” Sam manages to say between gritted teeth.
“I’m trying to save your life, so shut the hell up.” I keep pressure on the wound. Sam’s gun is now secured on Mitchell’s belt. Mitchell calls for backup and an ambulance.
“What are you doing here?” I ask him once he’s off the phone.
“I followed you. I wasn’t about to let you do something stupid like this without being around to have your back.” He keeps his gun trained on Sam. “I figured as long as you didn’t see me, he wouldn’t either.”
I have to admit it was a great plan, and I give Mitchell a lot of credit for sticking around to keep an eye on me after I slapped him.
“Why would you agree to meet him like this?” Mitchell asks me.
Sam smiles, but I can see how much it pains him to do so.
“Hold still,” I tell him. “You’re not dying on me now.” I haven’t found Angel yet, so this case isn’t over. And I need to find out if Angel is the last victim Sam took or if he had another lined up in case I did find her in time.
“You’re a fool,” Sam tells Mitchell. “She’ll never see you the way you see her.”
I look at Mitchell, not sure what Sam is talking about.
“If I had wanted to, I could have kissed Piper and she would have willingly kissed me back,” Sam says.
“That’s enough out of you. And for the record, I never would have kissed you.” I shove his shoulder down hard against the ground, making him cringe. “I bet you didn’t see that one coming,” I say.
Sam can’t stifle his cry this time.
Sirens fill the air as the paramedics rush into the cemetery. Mitchell waves them over. They jump out and immediately attend to Sam.
“We’ll meet you at the hospital. He’s being charged with kidnapping, and we haven’t found his latest victim, so I’ll need to question him as soon as he’s stable,” Mitchell tells the lead paramedic as they get Sam on a gurney and into the back of the ambulance.
Officer Wallace and Officer Andrews arrive next, and Officer Wallace opts to ride in the ambulance with Sam.
I start for my car, but Mitchell grabs my arm. “What the hell were you thinking, Piper?”
I shake free from his grip. “Don’t. You don’t get to question me after what you did. If you want to know what I’m thinking, it’s that you need to find yourself a new partner.” I walk over to the bench and grab the book Sam used to spark visions of me, and then I head back up the hill to my car. To my surprise, Mitchell doesn’t chase after me.
I drive to the hospital because now that Sam is in police custody, even if he is a patient at the moment, my deadline to find Angel isn’t as clear. He won’t kill her at five o’clock now, but I know how cold she was, and I can’t let that little girl get hypothermia either.
I realize reading her giraffe was the wrong way to go. I should have stayed focused on Sam and found out where he took her. Since he spent so much time reading my energy off this book, I figure I should be able to read his off it as well.
But just in case I’m wrong, I want to be there when the police interrogate him. I bring the book into the emergency room with me. I plan to read it in front of Sam, knowing it will torture him to see me win. Of course, truth be told, I’d be dead right now if not for Mitchell.
I’m forced to sit in the waiting room since I don’t know where Mitchell is and I doubt he’ll give me clearance right now anyway after what I said to him. I’m ready to start barging through doors to find Sam when Dad walks into the emergency room. I jump up and walk over to him.
He wraps me in a hug. “Mitchell told me what happened.” He suddenly pushes me back, holding me firmly by my shoulders. “Why, Piper? What would possess you to meet with that lunatic on your own? You told me Mitchell was meeting you there, but he said you went off without him and he followed you.”
He ratted me out. “Of course, he told you that. He wants to look like the hero.”
“He looks like the hero because he saved your life.” Dad’s tone is firm and no nonsense. “Stop being so stubborn and look at the facts. You’d be…” He clears his throat. “I’d be here for a very different reason right now if Mitchell hadn’t followed you.”
He’d be IDing my body in the morgue. “I’m sorry, Dad. I didn’t stop to think how this would affect you and Mom.” Mom! She’s been stressed out enough. “Did you tell her? Is she okay?”
Dad holds up a hand between us. “As far as she knows, you and Mitchell went to the cemetery to meet Sam together. Got it?”
I nod. “Thank you.” Mom can’t deal with the truth right now. “Do you know where Mitchell is now? I haven’t seen him.”
“At some point, you’re going to have to fill in the blanks for me because I know something is going on with you two.”
“Do you know where he is or not, Dad?”
He huffs. “Sam is in room 201. Mitchell is with him now. I’ll bring you up there.”
Dad is a retired police detective, so his title isn’t going to get him inside Sam’s room any more than mine would get me access. But we head up to the second floor together anyway.
“So—”
“Not now, Dad,” I say as we step off the elevator. I’ve been fortunate to have avoided most awkward father-daughter moments in my life because I didn’t really date. I’m not about to change that now.
We walk to room 201, but Officer Andrews is stationed outside the door. He shakes his head at us. “Sorry, but Officer Brennan said he doesn’t want anyone else inside.”
“Tell him I need to talk to Sam,” I say loudly enough that I know Mitchell heard me on the other side of the door.
In confirmation, the door opens and Mitchell peeks out. He nods to my dad first. “Piper, you want to come inside?”
“I’d love to,” I say, smirking at Officer Andrews as I walk past him.
He looks like there’s something he wants to say, but his mouth opens and then shuts.
Mitchell closes the door behind me, and I realize Dad opted not to come in with me.
Sam is lying down in bed.
“He’s pretty drugged up for the pain. He came through surgery well, though. He’ll make a full recovery.”
And then spend a long time in prison. “Has he woken up yet?” I ask.
Mitchell shakes his head. “Only stirred a few times.” He motions to the book in my hand. “Have you tried reading that?”
“Can I admit something to you?”
He cocks his head at me. “You know you can.”
“I’m afraid to. What he said in the cemetery about me being afraid to see the future… He was right. I’m scared.”
“That’s my fault. You’re afraid to end up like your grandmother and my mom.”
“You can’t take the blame for either,” I say. “And speaking of blame, it’s your fault I’m alive right now.”
“My fault?” He narrows his eyes at me. “I don’t follow.”
I shrug. “I’m a handful to deal with. I know that, and right now you’re stuck with me because you stopped Sam from pulling that trigger.”
“Is there a thank you hidden somewhere in all that?” he asks, crossing his arms in front of his chest.
As angry as I am with him, I do owe him for saving my life. “Thank you. I know going to meet him alone was stupid, but he never would have met me otherwise. And now I have this book, which will hopefully show me where he took Angel.”
“Yet you’re afraid to read it?” He moves closer to me but stops when there’s about six feet between us. “Why?”
“I’m not afraid to read it now. I was afraid to read it without…” I look down at the floor tiles.
“Oh,” he says, thankfully understanding and not forcing me to tell him I need him right now. “Okay, well what can I do? Do you want to sit down?” He motions to the chair by the window.
I nod and walk over to it. The plastic, yellow fake leather isn’t comfortable, but it will do.
I run my fingers over the raised lettering on the book cover. Deadly Silence. In my line of work, silence is deadly. It means I’m not seeing what I need to see. I push thoughts of Angel from my mind and focus on Sam.
Mitchell gives me a small nod of encouragement from his position at the end of Sam’s bed.
I close my eyes.
Sam drives the car through the dark streets. Every so often he looks in the rearview mirror at Angel, asleep on the back seat. Her neck is tilted at an odd angle.
I don’t get anything more. I slap the book against my thigh. “He made sure he didn’t say anything aloud that would help me find out where he took her.”
Soft laughter draws my attention to Sam’s bed. He’s awake.
Mitchell walks over to him. “What’s so funny?”
“Her. She’s on the precipice of cracking, and I’m the one who put her there. Bet you thought it would be you.” His eyes are trained on Mitchell. “You thought you’d be a lot of things.”
Mitchell raises his arm, and I grab it before he can punch a guy recovering from a gunshot wound.
Sam turns to me. “Did you see him try to hit me, or do you just know him that well?”
It suddenly hits me that Sam wants me to tap into the ability to see the future. I move toward him. “You want me to see the future so you can take credit for it.”
He smiles. “You’re smart, Piper. I thought I’d force you out of your comfort zone, finally get you past that hurdle. But like I said, you’re smart. You figured out I kidnapped Louisa, and that stopped you from getting close to me. It stopped you from being able to see anything I didn’t want you to see as well.”
“You’re purposely hiding things from me, aren’t you?”
He tries to move, but with his shoulder all bandaged and the pain moving causes, he doesn’t budge more than an inch upward on his pillow. “I’m good at hiding my thoughts, and I work alone without saying much of anything to those I kidnap, which means you don’t have much to work with.”
I go back through what I know. He couldn’t have taken Angel too far if he set the fire in the flower shop. Unless he left her. He could have drugged her like he drugged Louisa. But the one vision I had showed her crying out for her mother. So that means she’s either somewhere no one else could possibly hear her, like the abandoned warehouse where Sam kept Louisa, or the vision I had wasn’t the present time and it took place before he drugged Angel and left her.
Sam raises his good arm and circles a finger in the air. “The wheels are spinning.”
“I’ve had just about enough of your games,” Mitchell says. “If you don’t tell us where the girl is in the next twenty seconds, I’ll personally make sure you don’t ever step foot out of jail in your lifetime.”
“Such anger, Detective. Do you not have faith that your partner will figure this out?”
“You’re running her ragged. That’s been your intent from the start. You’ve blocked her visions, overtaxed her emotions, and tried to force her to tap into something she hasn’t learned to control yet.”
“Thanks for the recap,” Sam says before tilting his head to look around Mitchell at me. “How are you doing over there?”
“How were you able to have so many visions when I only held that book for a few minutes?”
“What I do isn’t limited to psychometry, Piper.”
No, it’s not. His gift isn’t like mine. I have to touch things to read them. Sure, sometimes truths just come to me, but that’s because I’m trying to figure something out. I’m open to those truths. Sam doesn’t have a choice sometimes. I look at Mitchell, guessing it was very similar for his mother. To have visions you don’t want to have is not a pleasant experience. I’ve accidentally read people and learned things I didn’t want to know. But to be walking down the street one day and see your own death… I can’t imagine the torment that would cause.
I step around Mitchell and face Sam. “You say you have control over your abilities, but that control is imagined. You can’t always decide when you’ll see the future. Sometimes it’s shown to you against your will.” Out of the corner of my eye, I see Mitchell go rigid beside me. “Do you know when you’ll die? How you’ll die?”
Sam’s lips press together like he’s biting back a comment he doesn’t want to say.
“You don’t. But you want to know.” Another thought strikes me. “That’s why you did this. You thought putting yourself in a life and death situation might show you the one thing you’ve never been able to see. Your death.”
“He wants to see himself die?” Mitchell’s tone reflects just how horrified he is by that thought.
I bend down so I’m close to Sam without touching him. “I’ll make you a deal. Tell me where Angel is, and I’ll help you figure out the answer to that question that’s been eating at you for years.”
Sam scoffs. “You can’t see the future. You’d be no help to me.”
“I can answer your question right now,” Mitchell says. “Tell us where Angel is, or I’ll—”
I shove Mitchell in the chest. “Enough! You’re going to get us kicked out of here, and then we’ll have nothing.”
“Sorry but he—”
“And FYI, that’s how you get someone’s attention when they’re freaking out,” I say.
“Make him leave, and I’ll talk to you, Piper,” Sam says.
“Not going to happen,” Mitchell says.
I look back and forth between them, trying to figure out if Sam is bluffing and if Mitchell would actually agree to leave me alone with the man who held a gun at my head. Sam’s done nothing but screw with me since I met him, but even so, he might be my best shot at finally finding Angel.
“Deal,” I say.
“No!” Mitchell yells. “I’m not letting you—”
I hold up a finger. “First, you don’t let me do anything. If you want to stay my partner, you need to respect the fact that I’m going to make decisions you won’t always like. Second, this isn’t your choice. It’s mine.”
Mitchell turns on his heel and marches over to the door, where he stops and levels a look at Sam. “I’m standing right outside here. If she so much as raises her voice to you, I’m coming in gun raised.” He leaves and shuts the door behind him.
“He’s so touchy.” Sam pats the bed as if I’d actually sit down with him.
“I’ll stand.”
“Suit yourself, but I have a secret for you.” He beckons me with the index finger on his left hand.
I narrow my eyes, tired of his games. “I’m listening.”
Sam lowers his voice to a whisper. “I already know how I die. I just wanted Detective Dick Face out of here when I told you.” He smiles. “I’m going to get the death penalty after you find Angel’s lifeless body.”