Sense of Deception (4 page)

“Lucky me.”

“Let's see if you still feel that way in the morning,” the charming CO replied with a smirk. She then moved a bit down the corridor and the cell door buzzed and began to slide open. Skylar kept her head down, submissively waiting for the cell to open all the way before stepping through. It upset me to think that prison had taken that sunny, bright-eyed woman from the photo and turned her into a beaten, battered shell of a person. She seemed so resigned to her fate—unjust though it might be.

“Skylar,” I called, right before the door clicked to a stop.

She didn't look at me, but I felt like she was listening.

I stayed on the bunk, but I leaned out a little while Stern Eyes waved Skylar forward. “I'm gonna help you,” I called to her. She made no acknowledgment of it. She simply took two steps forward out of the cell, and I knew that she put about as much faith in my words as she had left in the justice system.

The cell door buzzed again and it began to close. I got up and waited for the bars to slide across the threshold. Skylar and the guard quickly disappeared from my view. Grabbing the bars, I put my mouth between them and called out again. “I will, Skylar. I will!”

I wanted so much to reach her. To give her something to hold on to. A tiny light in the darkness. But as I extended my energy out toward her, all I felt was an empty sort of resignation.

That bothered me more than I could say.

I
'm pretty sure that Stern Eyes wanted me to spend a night in jail totally freaked-out and unable to sleep, but the truth is I slept like a rock. I woke up hungry as hell, but instead of getting ready to grab some grub with the other prisoners, I got up, made my bunk, and paced the floor until a new CO appeared at the door to my cell.

I held my wrists out in front of me, and when she nodded, I scooted forward and slid my wrists through the small window by the lock. “Time to go home!” I sang, even before she could tell me. Some days it really pays to be psychic.

As happy as I was to be let out of the cell, my psychic sense didn't predict what would come next, which was basically a lengthy sit-down with Matt Hayes while he pleaded for my release with Judge Schilling's clerk on the phone in the same small visiting room from the night before. In the end I was forced to write a lengthy apology to the judge and agree not to press charges against him for assaulting me in the courtroom. It irked me that Judge Schilling was coming out ahead in the deal, but Matt offered me little sympathy when I protested both the required written
apology and the agreement not to press charges. “What can I say, Abby? You pissed off a federal judge to the point where he lost his temper and wanted to
end
you. Even if he ultimately gets tossed off the bench for it, no judge who hears about what you did will welcome you back in the courtroom until you show some remorse for your part in provoking Schilling and respect for the post in general.”

With Matt's words weighing heavily on me, I typed out the sincerest apology letter I could, which Matt then e-mailed directly to the judge. It was rejected three times, so I suppose my sincerity needed to be
slightly
more earnest. The fourth time was the charm. Or the judge just got tired of reading about how very, very, very, very, very, very,
very
sorry I was.

Twenty minutes after the judge lifted the contempt-of-court charge against me, I was free and racing out the door to throw my arms around my BFF, Candice Fusco. “FREEDOM!” I shouted after hugging her and stepping back to raise my arms high.

Candice laughed. “Goofball,” she said, nudging me with her shoulder.

I looked around. “Where's my hubby? And for that matter, where's yours?”

Candice snaked an arm around my shoulders. “The boys send their regrets. They were here earlier, but it took you so long to write an apology to Schilling that they got called back to work by Gaston. He wants them to get cracking on finding some other evidence to nail that son of a bitch Corzo.”

“Is he back on the streets?” I asked.

“Last night,” she said grimly.

I hung my head. “I feel like it's my fault he's out.”

“Shocking.”

I glanced up at her. “You think it's my fault too?”

She gave my shoulders a squeeze. “No, honey, but in any case we lose, you always assign the blame to yourself. You gotta stop doing that. It's not healthy.”

“I'll work on that,” I said, shushing my inner lie detector.

“You probably want something to eat, huh?” she asked.

“Nope,” I told her. She raised her brow. “I want
many
somethings
to eat.”

Candice chuckled again and tugged me toward the parking lot. After leaving county, we shot over to one of my favorite Mexican joints, Mi Madre's, which serves THE best giant burrito ever put together, and you can order it at any time of day, which meant I'd be able to have at it even though it was only ten a.m. I've never been able to eat a whole burrito in one sitting, but that has never stopped me from trying.

While we waited on our food, Candice and I nibbled on chips and salsa. I did my best to restrain myself from gobbling down the entire basket. “So tell me,” Candice said with a slight twitch of her lips. “Anyone in county make you their bitch?”

I suppressed a grin. “No,” I said with an exaggerated sigh. “Do you think my looks are fading?”

“Yes,” Candice said without hesitation. I narrowed my eyes at her and she broke out into a hearty laugh. “You're too easy, Sundance.”

Sundance is my nickname. Well, one of my nicknames. Candice calls me Sundance, Dutch calls me Edgar, and I'm Abs to my sister. The guys at the bureau call me Cooper, but the director almost always calls me Abigail. To our handyman I'm the Abster, but when I look in the mirror, all I see is me. Abby—a girl with long brown locks, a nice enough nose, high cheekbones (thank you Gram!), and mildly moody sea blue eyes.

Our lunch arrived and I tucked in with relish (but not before requesting more chips). “So how was it, really?” Candice asked.

“What?” I said after savoring the mouthful of my giant burrito (spicy beef, French fries, avocado, lettuce, tomato, and creamy chipotle sauce all wrapped in a light flour tortilla). “You mean, jail?”

Candice nodded, having just taken a bite of her modest egg, cheese, and potato taco.

I shrugged. “It was fine. I mean, I knew I wasn't staying long, so it didn't freak me out much. But I did meet someone who left quite an impression on me.”

“Was she pretty?” Candice asked, with a bat of her eyelashes.

“Will you quit it?”

Candice chuckled. “Sorry. I'll stop. Who was it you met?”

“This woman named Skylar. Skylar Miller. She's on death row, in county waiting for her appeal. We shared the same cell.”

Candice's brow furrowed. “How did you get to share a cell with a death row inmate? That's not supposed to happen.”

“County's crowded.”

The frown on Candice's face remained. “Still, I can't believe they allowed that.”

“It wasn't a big deal,” I insisted.

“Sundance,” Candice said, reaching out to put a hand on my arm, like she just realized I'd escaped some sort of terrible danger. “Death row inmates have nothing to live for. They're dangerous to the rest of the population for a reason, because there's usually nothing you can threaten them with to keep them in line.”

“Skylar's not like that,” I told her. “She gave me half her Twix bar and a couple of peanut butter crackers when the CO refused to let me go to dinner.”

“Most people on death row are also masters at manipulation.”

I sighed. “Candice, will you please listen to the rest of the story before deciding that I just lost one of my nine lives?”

Candice lifted her hand from my arm. “Okay, tell me the rest.”

I took another bite of the burrito, moaned—it was so good—but chewed quickly before saying, “From what I could ascertain mostly through my radar, Skylar was convicted of murdering her son. He was nine. Stabbed to death back in two thousand four or the first half of two thousand five.”

Candice winced. “Ouch.”

“I don't think she did it.” The minute that came out of my mouth, I felt a lightness in the center of my solar plexus. That was my intuition telling me I was speaking a truth.

Candice set down her taco and looked hard at me across the table. “You think she's innocent?”

“Yes.”

“Is that your gut talking or the Twix bar?”

I frowned at her and tapped my temple. “My radar says she's innocent.”

“How innocent?”

“What do you mean, ‘how innocent'? Isn't innocent
innocent
?”

“Well,” she said, “if I'm hearing you right, I think what you're saying is that she didn't wield the knife in her son's murder.”

“Yes. That's what I think.”

“But what if she was indirectly responsible?”

“I'm still not following.”

Candice shifted in her chair. “What if she had a motive to kill him and contributed in the form of conspiracy to commit murder?”

My jaw dropped. “Candice,” I said. “What
reason
could a mother ever have to directly or indirectly kill her own child?”

Candice shrugged. “Off the top of my head I can think of a couple of reasons—”

“Such as?” I demanded.

Candice ticked them off on her fingers. “Munchausen by proxy, to collect an insurance settlement, or because she was an impatient
woman who decided she was sick of caring for a young child and wanted her life back. Or even that with him to feed and clothe, it left her less money to buy alcohol and/or drugs. I mean, what do you know about this woman's background?”

I frowned. I'd picked up on the addiction issues in Skylar's past right off the bat. “Okay, so you might have a point,” I conceded. “But here's the thing: I don't think she was indirectly involved either. I think she's been falsely accused, and she's on her last appeal and the state is prepared to give her the needle at the first opportunity.”

Candice folded her napkin and dropped it on her empty plate before leaning back in her chair to let out a sigh. “You're gonna ask me to help you look into the case, aren't you?”

“Yes.”

“A case that won't pay our rent or even the electric bill.”

“Yes.”

“A case where the clock is ticking and the odds are very long that we'll be able to make any sort of progress before time runs out.”

“Uh-huh.”

“A case that's a decade old and cold as the polar ice caps.”

“Yep, although global warming and my intuition might make things a tad more optimistic.”

Candice looked hard at me before she dropped her chin and shook her head. “Sundance, I'm gonna say this as someone who loves you—you're great company, but you're also a giant pain in the ass.”

“Would it help if I said please?”

“Couldn't hurt,” she said.

“Please?”

My best friend lifted her chin, a slight grin on her lips. “Fine. But you'll only get my help if you agree to a few conditions.”

“Shoot.”

“First, if we lose, I mean, if the clock runs out and we don't find anything that can clear this woman, you're not gonna go around blaming yourself for not figuring it out in time.”

I sat with that. I'm good with guilt. We're buddies. We've spent an awful lot of time together, but I could see what Candice was saying. When I get involved with a case, I'm all in. And this woman had struck such a weird chord with me; I felt so compelled to do what I could for her and I wasn't sure why. Keeping my emotions in check—especially if we couldn't clear her in time—wasn't going to be an easy task. “I'll try,” I told her, because that's all I felt I could promise.

“Okay, I guess that's honest. Condition number two is that we follow the evidence, and wherever it leads, we go there to find out the truth. I know you feel strongly about this woman's innocence, Abs—”

“It's not just my feelings, Candice. It's a solid knowing. My intuition is
insisting
that she's innocent.”

“And that's good enough for me to agree to get involved,” she was quick to say. “But, honey, if she were somehow indirectly involved, we can't turn a blind eye to that.”

I sighed. “Agreed.”

“Condition three—,” Candice started to say before I interrupted her again.

“You come with a lot of conditions for a girl who prides herself on keeping it simple.”

She flashed me a toothy smile. “I like to adapt to whatever the situation calls for. Condition
three
, we take paying cases and clients during the day and work on this in our off time. And speaking of paying clients, as you know, at the moment I have that huge cheating-husband case that I'm wrapping up, which is gonna hog
most of my time for the next couple of days, so I'll only be able to help you with this part-time. At least at first.”

“I guess that's fair,” I said. “We both have to bills to pay.”

“Condition four . . .” I sagged dramatically in my chair. Candice continued as if I hadn't moved an inch. “Cases like this always kick up a lot of dust. We're bound to piss someone off, from the prosecutor to the detectives who worked the case, to any of the extended family. We're gonna encounter a lot of hot tempers, Sundance. It's inevitable. And that means that you need to rein in that hair trigger of yours.” My BFF pointed to my mouth for emphasis.

“I'm not
that
bad,” I growled.

Candice reached for her purse. “Honey, you got your ass thrown in
jail
yesterday because you did what you always do when someone pushes your buttons. You come out swinging with that radar of yours, dropping little bombs of best-kept secrets all over the place until the room is full of casualties.”

I crossed my arms and glared at my best friend. I hated that she'd so easily pegged me. I'd learned to fight back against the onslaught of bullies that had populated my youth by publicly revealing their darkest secrets, pulling away their carefully held facades to expose them for the little weaklings they were. It'd been incredibly effective, and I'd done that even before I'd consciously known that I was psychic. Candice didn't look at me while I pouted; she simply dug out her wallet, took out a twenty, and then waved to our waiter for the check.

He dropped that off and Candice took a quick peek before enclosing the twenty in the small leather binder and handing it to him with her thanks.

“Fine,” I said quietly. “I'll rein it in.”

Candice focused once again on me. “That a girl,” she said, beaming. “Now, come on, we've got some work to do.”

Candice dropped me at home to shower and change, promising to meet me back at my place after she ran an errand. My car was still at the office, because Matt had come to collect me for court the previous day, so I'd need Candice to give me a lift to retrieve it.

Lucky me, I didn't have any clients scheduled for the day, as I read for clients only three days a week on a floating schedule, depending on what's going on with my FBI consulting duties, or what cases Candice and I are working on. I read for only about eighteen clients a week in total—any more than that and I'm too drained to work on the cases that Candice and the FBI bring in. Even that many, however, can leave me craving a nap in the middle of the day.