Part 6 (1/2)
Stefan couldn't tell if this woman believed him. That was unusual. He could almost always read people instantly, but FBI Special Agent Katie Rush was a whole different thing. Too controlled, too interior, too cool. He felt a compa.s.sion buried deep inside her, at odds with her thousand-yard police-issue stare, but that didn't tell him what she really thought, especially about him.
She probably thought he was nuts, he concluded. He would have, in her shoes. He tried not to take it personally.
G.o.d, that last vision had been horrible. His pulse was still racing erratically, his heart pounding. He'd thought for a second that he'd been about to pa.s.s out, when he'd come hurtling back from that b.l.o.o.d.y, catastrophic vision, and it had only been Katie's voice calling his name that had held him upright.
That, and the humiliation of pa.s.sing out in front of one of the most attractive women he'd ever seen, much less talked with. She looked fiercely capable; he doubted she'd be much impressed by him doing a face-plant on the table.
She looked up from her menu and gave him a little crook of her lips-could barely be called a smile, but somehow, it transformed her. It softened her face and made it luminous, almost angelic, and woke an appealingly wicked glint in her eyes. He fell in love with her eyes, and the one corner of her mouth that pulled higher than the other. And her skin. She had gorgeous matte-satin skin.
She'd said something. He blinked. ”Sorry?”
”Pie. What kind of pie?” she asked.
He cleared his throat, retrieved a sticky plastic-laminated menu from the holder on the table and pretended to be interested in the choices. ”Sharing food. Does that make this some kind of a date, Special Agent Rush?”
When he glanced up, she was still smiling, but it had changed slightly, a Mona Lisa echo he wasn't sure he could decipher. She focused on her menu while he was still wondering. It confused him. What was she waiting for? She didn't seem like the kind of person who would sit around for a leisurely dinner if she had hard information about where two abducted girls might be, or at least, had been recently.
Of course. She hadn't believed him, or at least, she was waiting for confirmation one way or the other. She'd gone out to ask the cops in the cruiser to dispatch someone to the gas station. So this was a stalling tactic. And she was charming him to disarm him, in case he might decide to get up and try to leave before she had hard facts as to his truthfulness. And/or sanity.
He had to admire her for her dedication.
Well, since they were being so polite, he might as well get a decent piece of pie out of it.
The tired-looking waitress wandered over, and Stefan ordered a slice of coconut meringue pie, and-as Katie suggested-milk. He expected Agent Rush to order a salad-it seemed to be de rigueur for women on dates, even pretend dates, these days-but then again, she was from the Midwest, not SoCal.
She went with a hamburger. Once the menus were out of the way, she avoided his gaze, choosing to meticulously line up her hard-used tableware and inspect the interior of her coffee cup, from which all coffee had been safely extracted.
She was just-he hated to think it about someone as potentially, catastrophically dangerous as an FBI agent-cute.
And you're thinking like this to keep your mind off of other things, some traitor voice in his head reminded him, and just like that, the whole vision was back, vivid and violent.
Fear. Darkness, then pain as the girl was forced to her knees and then to her feet. She'd run, she'd gotten loose and run but her balance was off because of the bonds on her wrists, and she'd tripped and gone sprawling on the still-warm concrete, bathed in the harsh white lights of the gas station awning.
The attendant had ducked out of the booth and yelled, ”Hey, you leave her alone!” She'd whimpered deep in her throat, unable to scream or warn him, and had to stand and watch, just watch, as one of the black-masked men slipped up from the side, extended his arm, and a sharp pop echoed through the desert.
Blood spattered the plate gla.s.s window as the attendant fell. No time for the horror because hands were dragging her, off balance, back to the van....
He jerked and pressed his hands flat against the table, furious with himself. He'd never had this problem. He'd become a street magician because it was fun, it was challenging and it required razor-sharp mental and physical control, and now he was reduced to a trembling wreck. Couldn't cut a deck one-handed to save his life.
”You all right?” the strict G.o.ddess across the table asked. He didn't look up.
”Fine,” he said. ”I'm fine. So what's the next step? What do you do now?”
”It's already being done,” she said. ”You've given us a lead. Once we verify it, we'll be moving quickly to seal off the area and isolate the van. We're trained for this. It's going to be okay.”
”Only you don't believe me,” he said, very quietly, and looked up to meet her eyes. ”Right?”
Silence. Katie was good with silence; she used it as a tool. Growing up in the Blackman household had been an exercise in coping with controlled chaos, day in and day out. Silence...wasn't part of Stefan's life experience.
She finally said, ”I want to believe you, Mr. Blackman. But I can't afford to blindly trust anyone. There are two girls' lives at stake.”
It was, he had to admit, a valid point, but it was still irritating. In his entire life, Stefan had never not been trusted by a woman. Of course, he wasn't generally trusted by cops, and an FBI agent was a kind of white-collar cop, but still, it rankled. Women liked him.
Maybe he was losing his touch.
”If you'd just listen to me, we could do it faster,” he said. ”I could try to tell you exactly where the van was.”
She looked intrigued. ”How? Psychometry?”
”What's psychometry?”
”Touching an object that belongs to one of the girls.”
The waitress came back to refill their cups; Stefan leaned back to avoid being splashed. ”You know more than I do about it. Not my bag.”
”So what exactly is your bag?” A cop's question, delivered casually but no less important for all that.
”Didn't you check me out already?”
”I know that you're from Los Angeles-”
”Venice Beach, actually. I just work in Los Angeles part of the time.”
”-and that you're involved in film and television.”
”As a consultant.”
”And I know that you've had a couple of arrests for fraud,” she said.
Ah. He'd been wondering when that would come snarling up out of the dark to bite him in the a.s.s. She delivered it with perfect poker-faced impartiality, and waited for his reaction.
He nodded. ”True,” he said. ”I have been. I work the streets in VeniceBeach as a magician-not a psychic. But from time to time, really obnoxious people won't take no for an answer, they want me to be psychic on demand. Those guys deserve a first-cla.s.s prognostication, don't you think? Something to tell them how to invest their money wisely? It's not my fault they buy some dog of a stock and get burned. Being wrong's not illegal. Besides, all of the charges were dismissed.”
She thought it over. ”If you don't bill yourself as a psychic, why do they seek you out for advice?”
”Because the Blackman name comes with baggage.” He sighed. ”My grandfather was a famous psychic. So was my grandmother. My mother is a psychic to the stars, she's got quite a reputation. Even my dad is a pet psychic. So I'm a psychic by a.s.sociation, and some people just won't take 'not interested' for an answer. When they get pushy, I sting. But it's not fraud. It's their own greed getting the better of them.”
Which, he was well aware, was the basis of any con game, but he hoped she could see the difference. He couldn't tell. It unsettled him that she was so self-contained.
”Mr. Blackman-”
”Stefan.”
She didn't blink. ”Mr. Blackman, let's just say that regardless of how you explain it now, it doesn't exactly enhance your credibility. You see that, don't you?”
He gave up. ”Yes.” Luckily, he was saved from groveling by the arrival of her hamburger and his pie. Both looked surprisingly delicious, and he was shocked to feel a sudden wave of hunger, verging on starvation. They fell to eating without another word, except for a few subvocal moans of pleasure from Agent Rush, which made him forget a little bit about the horror show inside of his head and wonder what it might take to get her to moan like that over things other than food. A very diverting question.