KILEY’S ENTIRE HOUSE WAS surrounded in yellow police tape. Police cars, SUVs and vans lined the street, and heavy equipment growled and belched in the back yard. News crews were everywhere, but Kiley wasn’t giving any interviews. She’d written what she could about all of this in her latest column, and the rest was going into a book.
She stood on the sidewalk, watching the bodies being exhumed and carried in plastic bags out to waiting vehicles, one by one. Jack sat on the curb close beside her, fallen leaves in brilliant colors carpeting the sidewalk around him, reading the paper.
Officer Hanlon came over to where she stood. “They’ve arrested Phillip Miller. There were three women in his basement when they arrived.”
Jack looked up from the newspaper. Kiley’s throat tightened up. “Alive?”
“Yes. Thanks to you.”
She swallowed hard. “Thanks for telling me.”
Hanlon nodded and headed back to the house. Kiley looked down at Jack. “Well?”
He met her eyes, then refocused on the page and began reading aloud from her latest column. “‘So to sum it up, I’ve learned that not everything I don’t understand or believe in is necessarily make-believe. There are good psychics, and there are bad ones. And the only way to judge which is which is by how they make you feel. If their advice helps you, heals you, answers a need you have, then they are as genuine as any minister, priest, pastor or shrink. I’m retiring from my former career of debunking everything I don’t happen to believe in. After what I’ve seen in my house, I know now that there is far more in this world than I will ever understand. And it humbles me to admit that the extraordinary and genuine skills and gifts of three psychics I called fakes—two of them in this very column—were what enabled me to find the truth about the women who were murdered and buried on my property, and to stop a killer at the end of a thirty-year spree. Those psychics were for real, even though I claimed to have proven otherwise. I will never question what I don’t understand again.’”
Jack folded the newspaper and got to his feet. “It’s wonderful. Your best column ever.”
She shrugged. “If a psychic as gifted as you are doesn’t know whether he’s a fraud or not, how the hell can I pretend to?” She shook her head. “I can’t believe you were as convinced you were a fake as I was, all this time. How can you have a gift like that and not know?”
Jack shrugged. “Chris knew. He knew all along. I guess it just took a case I cared this much about to make me aware of it.”
“Yeah? And what was it about this case that made you care so much?”
He gave her a slow, sexy smile, reached out to clasp her nape and pulled her to him for a long, lingering kiss. His lips moved against hers when he said, “I think you know.”
“No way,” she whispered back. “You’re the one who’s psychic, remember?”
“Right. So I suppose I have to spell it out for you.”
She sent him a smile and nodded. “Please.”
“I’m nuts about you, Kiley. I don’t know when I went from hating you to loving you—maybe it was from the very start. But I know I do.”
She nodded. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
“Why?”
“Well, I’m going to need a place to crash for a while, for one thing.”
He made a face at her. She smiled fully. “And you know, there is that pesky fact that I love you, too.”
“Do you?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
He kissed her once more, tucked her under his arm and led her back down the sidewalk toward the car. “When the police have finished here, we should have the other psychics in town come back here, do a cleansing ritual, make sure those spirits have made it across to the other side. They deserve to be at peace. God knows they’ve suffered long enough,” Jack said.
“I agree. But I have a feeling they made it just fine. I think they’re at peace now, Jack.”
“Yeah, I feel as if they are, too.”
They reached the car, and he opened her door for her.
“Where are we going?”
“My place, or I guess I should say our place now.”
She shot him a loving look. “You mean I can move in?”
“Yeah. Just one rule, Kiley.”
“What?”
“You can’t bring any ghosts with you.”