Cold Touch (12 page)

“So. Whaddya say?” he asked with a wide grin. “Lab or golden retriever?”

“You’d scare it to death.”

“I would not,” he said, stiffening, indignation lacing his voice. “I like dogs.”

“I don’t think dogs like your kind.”

“That’s very bigoted. You’re a ghostist.”

She rol ed her eyes.

“A dog would be good company for you.”

Groaning, she considered sticking earplugs in her ears, but knew then he’d

just do that freaky thing where he talked inside her head. “Better than you?

Yeah, I’d say so.”

“I’m wounded, Julia,” he said, flashing that ultrasexy grin that stil had the

ability to stop her heart after al these years.
Ten. I’ve known him for ten years.

Two when he was alive, eight since he was murdered.
“You know how

sensitive I am.”

That note of mischief in his voice and the aggrieved tone almost brought a

smile to her lips, as she knew he wanted. “You’re as sensitive as a pit bul ,”

she said.

If it were possible, Morgan Raines was more of a cocky, sexy smart-ass in

the afterlife than he’d been in his real one. And that was real y saying

something.

Huh. Did this count as his afterlife, since it was stil her real one? One of the

many things she hadn’t figured out about this exceedingly strange relationship.

“See? You do have dogs on your mind.”

Gritting her teeth, she glanced at the clock, saw it was wel after three and

groaned. “I mean it; I need to get this done. Just give me twenty minutes to

finish, and then I’l let you analyze my life and tel me how poorly I’m living it.”

“Those who are alive usual y do,” he said, managing to sound pious, which

didn’t suit him. Throwing himself back on the love seat that stood in the corner,

he added, “I’m so bored!”

“So go find a Christmas tree and perch on top of it.”

“Ha-ha. I’m not an angel.”

“No, you’re a devil,” she said, not believing she’d let him suck her into this

conversation.

“There’s no such thing.”

“How do you know?”

He suddenly frowned, his brown eyes darkening to near black as he

became very serious, indeed. “Because nothing in creation could be as bad

as an evil man.”

Their stares met, his good humor melting away along with her irritation. Yes,

they knew a lot about evil men. More than most ever would. Among those men,

the one who had kil ed him and the ones who had hired him.
Someday, I’ll find

them. I swear it. Someday.

Instead of making that promise again, she merely whispered, “Touché.”

His frown stil in place, he nodded once, then crossed his arms and stared

out the window, letting her get back to work. She hated to leave things on that

note, far preferring a mischievous ghost to a melancholy one. But his moods

were always mercurial; he was an eternal twenty-six years old, energetic, hard

to keep down.

Funny, when they’d met, he’d been the older one, the experienced one

who’d taken her, the fresh-out-of-col ege rookie, under his wing. Now she’d

moved past him, right into her thirties, growing, maturing, aging. She had a

business and a mortgage and a lot of responsibilities to go with them, while

he would be forever young. Free.

Dead
.

Throwing off the thought, she turned back to her computer, needing to finish

this report she’d been typing. It was for a client who was looking for her

missing sister-in-law, who had disappeared weeks ago. Bad enough to tel

the woman she was correct in her suspicions that the sister-in-law had met

with foul play. Worse to tel her that the woman’s husband—the client’s own

brother—had been the one who’d made her disappear. Then again, if the

client hadn’t suspected her brother, she would have gone directly to the police

with some evidence she’d discovered, rather than to a group of private

detectives, especial y a group of private detectives as specialized as

eXtreme Investigations.

“Specialized? I think you mean ostracized.”

“Stop it, Morgan,” Julia snapped, knowing he’d already gotten over his brief

bout with the dead-guy blues. “Get out of my head.” He couldn’t do it often,

especial y because she was very careful to guard her thoughts, but obviously

her stress was speaking loud and clear.

“
Shh
, pipe down,” he said, laughter evident in his voice. “Do you want our

new receptionist to think you’re crazy and quit the first week on the job?”

“I
am
crazy,” she muttered.

“Nah, if you were real y crazy, you’d think you were perfectly sane.”

Maybe. Or maybe she’d just gotten real y good at convincing herself

Morgan was here because she so wanted him to be. But, if the issue had

merely been about not being able to let him go, wouldn’t his “ghost” have been

around since right after his death?

It hadn’t been. In fact, he’d been gone for months after he’d been shot down

in the street. She’d almost begun to think she real y could go on living without

him, if only so she could catch the men who’d kil ed him. Then she’d come

face-to-face with a punk aiming a gun at her, and who should show up to save

her life but her old partner. Her old love, Morgan Raines.

“If I weren’t real y here, could I do this?” he asked.

She sucked in a breath, watching as he lifted a vase fil ed with fresh flowers.

“If you drop that, you’re going to clean it up.” Julia glanced at the closed door,

wishing she’d locked it, since she was the only one who could see the solid-

looking man holding the vase. If her new receptionist walked in now, she’d see

a vase of pretty roses floating a few feet off the floor and would either faint or

quit on the spot.

The woman wouldn’t be the first to run out screaming at the stuff that went

on around here. Hel , sometimes Julia herself was tempted to. After al ,
she

didn’t have any powers; she couldn’t do anything like what Aidan, Mick, Derek

or, God help her, Olivia, could. She just had a relationship with a dead guy.

One guy. There were no other ghosts in her world. Sometimes, like now, even

one was way too many, and she wondered what it might be like to have a

normal life.

Then Morgan put the vase down. Winking, he flashed her that unbelievable

smile, the one that had claimed her heart long ago when they’d met on the job

with the Charleston PD. And Julia mental y acknowledged what she’d known

since the day she’d first seen his ghost, backing her up the way he always had

when he was alive: Normal was way overrated.

“Oh, hey, I forgot to tel you something.”

Julia went back to her typing. “Uh-huh?”

“Your friend, Olivia? Something’s up with her.”

That caught her interest, mainly because Olivia had done something she’d

never done in the more than two years she’d worked here. She’d cal ed in

sick. “What?”

“I’m not sure. But somebody’s been looking for her, trying to get at her.”

“Somebody . . . like who?” she asked, wishing he would just get to the point.

“Wel ,” he replied, “somebody . . . like me.”

“Just wait until you get a load of this.”

Startled, Ty looked up, realizing his partner was back again from his latest

interaction with their new witness. This time, though, Gabe didn’t look hopeful

about having a break in their case. Instead, he looked both angry and a little

disgusted. Ty couldn’t remember ever seeing that expression on his face

before. While his partner could be a total hard-ass who was absolutely

fearless on the job, for the most part, Gabe Cooper seemed most natural

when doing his you-can-trust-me-I’m-just-a-good-ol’-boy thing.

“What’s up? You get anywhere with the Wainwright woman?”

“You’re not going to believe what she wanted me to let her do,” his partner

said, throwing himself down into an empty chair. He quickly explained the

woman’s bizarre request, adding, “Is that whacked or what? I almost fel outta

my chair.”

“What’d you do instead?”

“What do you think? I ended the interview and escorted her to the exit.”

Too bad. Ty was very curious about the woman. “She say why she wanted to

see the remains for herself?”

“No,” Gabe snapped, “but I assume it has something to do with the fact that

she works with that paranormal detective agency, eXtreme Investigations.”

Ty had heard of the outfit, though only in the most general how-stupid-is-this-

shit terms most cops used when talking about psychics. As for Ty? Wel , he

wasn’t gonna cal himself a believer, but he wasn’t a skeptic, either. Some

mysteries couldn’t be explained by normal means. As far as he was

concerned, the idea of somebody having the brains to read another person’s

mind was no crazier than thinking man might soon figure out a way to travel

outside the solar system. Yet one concept was laughed at, the other

considered a likely possibility in the future.

“I think I’d like to get a look at this woman,” he admitted.

Gabe had grabbed his laptop off his own desk and began punching on the

keys. Then he turned the thing around so Ty could see the screen. It was a

Web site for the paranormal detective agency and included pictures of the

staff.

Ty couldn’t help whistling. Olivia Wainwright was a beauty—a little skinny,

maybe, but pretty in a fragile way. Part of him wondered if that’s what had

Gabe so riled up: worrying that such an attractive, delicate-looking female

might be as nutty as a Snickers bar. But he didn’t think that was it. Gabe had

never been one to let any kind of personal life interfere with his work.

If, that is, he had a personal life. So far, in the year they’d worked together,

If, that is, he had a personal life. So far, in the year they’d worked together,

Ty hadn’t seen much evidence of one.

“There’s more.” His partner was tugging a cel phone out of his pants,

staring at it, then at a smal white business card he held in his other hand.

“What’s that?”

Gabe tossed the card onto the desk. “I guess you’d cal it a character

reference.”

Glancing at the name and title, Special Agent Steven Ames, Federal

Bureau of Investigation, Atlanta office, Ty could only shake his head in

confusion. “Who’s this guy?”

“The FBI agent who handled her kidnapping case. Apparently they stil keep

in touch, and she’s sure he’l ‘vouch’ for her. Before she left, she asked me to

give him a cal .”

Gabe muttered something else under his breath.

“Huh?”

“I said I guess he works with Mulder and Scul y.”

Ty snickered. “At least she came prepared, knowing you’d need convincing.

”

“I thought she was gonna cal Daddy and ask him to lean on the chief.”

“Wainwright . . . she connected to
that
Wainwright?”

“I think so.” Gabe plunked some keys on his laptop and made a sound of

disgust. “Yep. Her grandfather was a former senator, and the current Senator

Wainwright is her cousin.”

Ty whistled. “Do you real y think she’d cal in that big a favor, al so she can

feel up some old bones? That’s pretty fuckin’ morbid, man.”

“I don’t know how far this one’s wil ing to go. She seems like a very

determined woman. And it’s not just that she wants to examine them, she

wants to be alone when she does it.”

That sounded sick, twisted, and if it were anybody else, Ty would probably

be advising his partner to ignore the crazy psychic. But he couldn’t deny that

he felt curious about what this woman could do. After al , he’d read the whole

file; he knew what she’d been through, what she’d seen, felt, experienced. Did

he real y think spending a scary night in a graveyard had opened up a

gateway between the woman and the afterlife? No. Not real y. But, if her

statement was to be believed, she
had
been dead herself that very same

night. Two minutes dead, at least.

He didn’t think his partner knew that, however. Ty wondered if it would make

any difference if he did. No, he didn’t suppose the story would suddenly turn

Gabe Cooper into a Casper believer, rushing out to load up on rock salt for

his shotgun. It might make him look at the woman who seemed to be driving

him a little crazy in a slightly different way, though.

She did seem to be driving him a little crazy. Why else would his usual y

calm, laid-back partner be so worked up about what she wanted? Yeah, it was

off the wal . But this was Savannah, where law firm porters walked invisible

dogs for twenty years after the canines had died, if you believed that Kevin

Spacey movie. They weren’t talking about her getting some kind of sick thril s

off seeing a fresh body—most people wouldn’t know the bones were human if

the skul weren’t there. Besides, al he had to do was say no. But it was as if

Gabe were personal y upset about the request having been made. Interesting.