Now You See Her Linda Howard(44)

He snagged a bottle of beer from the refrigerator and sat down in front of the television. His fondness for the occasional beer had always reminded Candra of his peasant origins. Though she seldom said anything about it, he had always been aware of her mingled distress and disdain. When they were first married, when he had cared what she thought, he had restricted himself to her approved list of wines, mixed drinks, and whiskeys. Projecting the right image hadn't been important to him, then or now, but it had been to her. When she started cheating, he stopped caring, and from then on there had always been beer in the refrigerator.

He suspected Sweeney wouldn't know one wine from another, and furthermore wouldn't care to know.

It was a refreshing attitude.

He propped his feet on the coffee table and turned to a news channel, but he already knew the Dow Jones, and Standard and Poor's averages. He knew the latest price of gold; he knew what the Asian markets were doing, what the money markets were doing, what the Chicago futures were doing, and he didn't give a shit. Work would wait. He had more important things on his mind.

Sweeney's claim to see ghosts and affect electronics didn't bother him. He didn't necessarily believe it, but it didn't bother him. She was patently sane, so at worst her convictions were eccentric. The electronics effect was easily explained; some people couldn't wear battery-operated watches because their personal energy field made the watches go haywire. If she really did affect traffic signals, that was fine with him.

Several things did bother him, though. Those severe chills she was having, whether caused by shock or something else, were serious enough to incapacitate her. He didn't know if she was in any true physical danger, but judging from what he had seen that morning, he thought it was more than a little possible.

Whether triggered by her imagination or some physical condition, the events were real.

He wanted to believe there was some underlying physical cause, something easily adjusted with medication. That would be the simplest, most logical cause and solution.

Unfortunately, there was that painting of Elijah Stokes. He couldn't find any possible explanation for its existence.

As soon as he had seen the painting, he had known it depicted a violent death. Sweeney didn't seem to realize quite what she had painted, but then she hadn't seen a lot of death and violence. He had. In the army, he had been trained to be efficiently violent, to perform his mission and avoid capture, and to kill. He had been good at it, and not just in exercises. The rangers, like all other special-forces groups, were often sent on clandestine missions that were never reported in the news. He knew what death looked like, what blunt-force trauma looked like, so he had been expecting David Stokes to say his father had been murdered.

Sweeney didn't live in Elijah Stokes's neighborhood; she hadn't even known his name until she learned the names of his sons. Nor could she have found out about his death afterward and done the painting, because the paint had been completely dry today. While Sweeney's back was turned, he had touched the paint, especially the thick red of the blood, and it hadn't been sticky. No, she didn't know Elijah Stokes had been murdered, and he didn't intend to tell her. She was already upset about the painting, and he didn't want to do anything that might trigger another episode of hypothermia or shock.

If anyone had told him a month ago, even a week ago, that he would be entertaining the notion such psychic phenomena could be real, he'd have laughed in his face; that was tabloid fodder. But this was Sweeney; she wasn't a good liar, wasn't good at any sort of deception. Watching her reaction to the McMillans had made him want to laugh out loud, because her growing repulsion and desperation to get out of there had been plain on her face. When she didn't want to tell him something, she didn't pretend not to know the answers he wanted; she just got a mutinous, stubborn expression. She didn't play games, didn't know how.

After Candra's deceptiveness, after the social snobbery he had observed for ten years, some of which he had endured, Sweeney was like a drink of fresh water. She was direct and honest, so even if he didn't believe some of the things she had told him, he had to believe that she did. And he had to believe she had painted Elijah Stokes's death scene without having seen it, without having known the old man was dead.

So, with the evidence at hand, he had to discard logic and take a leap of faith. She wasn't crazy and she wasn't deceptive. He had to believe she'd had at least one true psychic experience. If he loved her, he had to believe her.

Son of a bitch. Shocked by the thought, Richard surged to his feet and restlessly paced the room.

Wanting her was one thing, a healthy sexual reaction to a desirable woman. He liked her. When he first asked her out, only a few days before, he had known he would like to have a steady, exclusive, and very sexual relationship with her. He hadn't thought about love. He was just getting out of a bad marriage, though the divorce was only the legal epitaph on the tombstone of something that had been dead a long time. Loving Sweeney wasn't convenient. The timing was bad, and he suspected she could be a real pain in the ass. She was difficult and prickly, and probably didn't compromise worth a damn.

But she was honorable, and this morning when she woke in his arms, the smile she had given him had been as sweet as an angel's. His heart had literally skipped a beat. He had known then he was in real trouble. A man would do a lot for a woman who smiled at him that way, all warm and drowsy and satisfied. He would move mountains for the privilege of making love to her, of watching her face while he brought her to orgasm. Having had a taste of Sweeney's passion, he knew he wouldn't be able to hold out much longer. One way or the other, Candra would sign those papers, and he would call in every favor owed to him to get a hearing before a judge as soon as possible. Sooner. Within a week.