Nothing to Lose (J.P. Beaumont #25)(102)

“Okay, okay, Harriet,” I muttered to myself. “I guess I’ve got nothing to lose.”

Reluctantly, I grabbed up the pouch, carried it into the bedroom, and stuffed it under my pillow, grateful that Mel was sawing logs and wasn’t awake to see my capitulation.

Not long after I fell asleep, the dream came again—the same awful dream that has haunted me for years, and it started the exact same old way. I drive up to Sue Danielson’s lighted residence and switch off the engine of my vehicle. Holding my breath, I step up onto Sue’s front porch and discover that the door isn’t locked. I turn the knob and push the door open to reveal a scene awash in blood.

Sue—shot, bleeding, and dying—sits propped against the far wall as Richie Danielson, her ex, disappears from view down a short hallway. I hand her my backup weapon and then pause for an indecisive moment, torn between trying to help Sue and going after Richie. I have yet to move one way or the other when a gunshot rings out as Richie takes his own life, and then I turn back to Sue and race in her direction. Usually at that point my firearm slips from her lifeless fingers because she’s already gone.

But this time something is different. When I reach her and kneel beside her, Sue is gravely wounded and dying yes, but she’s still breathing—not only breathing but smiling up at me.

“You’ve got this, Beau,” she whispers. “You’ve got this.”

Those were her last words. I awakened out of the dream with my face wet with tears, but with sudden a sense of calm and with the certain knowledge that Sue was right. I hadn’t been able to save her life or her son’s, but I had returned her long-lost Christopher to his family, and that was what she’d really needed.

For the first time ever, the dream didn’t send me sweaty, sleepless, and shaken to spend the remainder of the night pacing the living-room floor. Instead I rolled over onto my side, threw one arm over Mel’s soft shoulder, and fell right back to sleep.

It turns out Harriet Raines was right, and so was her medicine man—that beaded leather pouch worked like a charm.





About the Author




J. A. JANCE is the New York Times bestselling author of more than sixty books. Born in South Dakota and raised in Bisbee, Arizona, she lives in the Seattle

area with her husband and their two long-haired dachshunds, Mary and Jojo.

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