Chapter 1

1

C ome on, Hale. There’s nothing you can do right now.”

“Nothing I can do?” She snatched her arm from his hand and narrowed her eyes. “I can damn sure stand right here until they load her into the bus, Fitz. No one was here to save her. We weren’t good enough. But I can stand here and make sure she’d taken care of. It’s called respect and you used to have some.”

Holding up his hands in a sign of surrender, the fifty-something, dumpy detective with more gray hair than dark and yellow teeth from too much coffee and too many cigarettes, acknowledged, “Okay, all right, I’ll have a smoke and wait for you to go back to the squad room. I’ll pull out the other files as soon as we get back. Maybe we’ll get lucky and he’s made a mistake this time.”

Nodding as she looked at the black plastic bag containing the twenty-one-year old’s body, she couldn’t get past the fact that once again her ‘gift’, that’s how her parents had referred to it, had let her down. Why couldn’t she see this shit before it happened? What good were her visions, if she couldn’t use them to help?

Following the morgue attendants as they pushed the gurney towards the huge, dark blue and white van marked Tarrant County Coroner’s Office, Nat waited until Misty Blake was safely inside before heading for her car. Stopping next to Fitz as he put out his fifteenth cigarette of the day, she bumped his shoulder with hers and blew out a long breath.

Looking over her shoulder, the light of the newly risen sun glittering on the water, she asked, “Hey, can you get a ride back to the precinct?”

“Yeah, sure, but where are you goin’?”

“Gotta see Nona.”

“See if she’s got any of those little lemon cookies that look like a figure-eight.”

“You mean Italian Lemon Cookies.” She raised her eyebrows and shook her head.

“Yeah, those. And stop bustin’ my balls, will ya’? I’m not Italian but your Nona loves me just the same.”

“Never,” she laughed, getting into her car and shutting the door.

Nona aka Grandma Angelina was old as the hills, feisty as a snake, and the only other person still alive with the ‘Sight’. That’s what she called the freakier than hell extra sense that allowed the first-born daughter of every DeBenedetto to see either the future, or the past, or the combination of both.

There was also a family secret that one day this very special DeBenetto woman would be able to see forward and backward and here comes the really ‘fun’ part…it is rumored that she would be able to ‘touch evil’. That’s where Nat came in, or so she’d found out when she was ten years old.

Walking home from school with the regular group of kids, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something very wrong was about to happen. Seeing the past and the future was old hat, she’d been doing that for almost three years, and had gotten really good at tuning it out most of the time. However, the feeling of dread and darkness was all new.

Her dreams had been different than ever before for nearly two weeks, but when she finally calmed down after being frightened awake, she couldn’t remember anything but fear and darkness. When she’d finally told her mom, Cleo had immediately called Nona and that was when Nat found out she was the grand prize winner of the Universe’s most effed up shit sandwich.

Nearing the park at the crossroads where each of her three friends, the stupid boys that always hung around, and Nat went their separate ways, it felt like someone was watching her. Brushing it off, she hugged all her friends, said she’d talk to them later, and headed down Wurzburg Drive to her house.

The next day when she got to the four-way stop, no one was there – not even the stupid boys. Waiting as long as she could before she knew she’d be late and get a tardy slip, she ended up jogging to school.

Once inside and in her seat, she turned around to find Stacey’s seat empty. It wasn’t like any of her friends to miss school, but especially Stacey. She prided herself on five straight years of Perfect Attendance Awards, loving to brag that she’d even won in kindergarten.

Where could she be? Her dad was a doctor, her mom a nurse, and together, they made sure all three of their children were always well taken care of. Nothing made sense, especially in her way-older-than-her-years mind.

At lunch, she sat down beside Jill and Marion and immediately asked, “Where is Stacey?”

“You haven’t heard?” Marion, the tiny girl with long blond hair and big blue eyes, started to cry. “She didn’t come home last night. Her mom called my mom at nine and asked if she’d come home with me.”

“Yeah, she called my mom, too,” Jill jumped in, her big brown eyes open so wide her eyebrows disappeared under her short red bangs. “Didn’t Mr. Calhoun call your mom and dad?” She took a drink of her milk before adding, “The police started looking first thing this morning.”

Sliding down the bench, stopping when she was uncomfortably close to Nat, Diana Blake, the coolest sixth grader in all of Sycamore Elementary School, plopped her bag lunch on the table and leaned in. “Here about Stacey? They think that creepy dude who whipped his wang out in front of the Rest Home took her.”

Gasping in unison, the three friends looked at one another then back to Diana who was already adding, “Guess he’s not who he says he is. Got a fake driver’s license and a truck with a camper that got no plates.”

“How do you know?” Nat had challenged. “Did you hear your dad talking or are you making this up to scare us?”

Always the leader and the protector of their little group, Nat knew the older girl’s dad was a Detective for the Tarrant Sherriff’s Department, but she also knew from her dad, who happened to be a Circuit Court Judge, that Jeremy was a good cop. He didn’t share information, kept his head down, and had cleared more cases than anyone else.

She also knew that Diana was sneaky, liked to embellish the truth for attention, and had sticky fingers when it suited her purpose. Waiting for an answer as the older girl dumped her sandwich, chips, apple, and juice pouch on the table, Nat once again got the feeling she was being watched.

It took nearly all of lunch period, but Diana finally fessed up that she was listening at the door to her dad’s home office. It figured? Of course, the worst news Nat had received in all of her ten years was the truth. Her friend was missing, and a creep lived in their quiet little neighborhood.

“And that was my first lesson in ‘nothing is ever as it seems’,” she scoffed, shoving her key into the ignition and starting her department-issued Mustang, she added, “The creep was just a bum and the well-respected teacher was a pedophile, kidnapper, and murderer. People just suck.”

Pulling out of the park and onto Hulen Blvd, she made a quick right and jumped onto the highway. Driving to the suburbs of Dallas, she thought about the young woman who’d lost her life the night before. That made six in eighteen months. One every three months to the day.

“How did I forget that?” Her voice echoed in the empty car. “Because this is only the second one in Ft Worth.” She answered her own question, thinking out loud. “The bastard has left a string of bodies from Dallas to Arlington through Hurst-Euless-Bedford and nor Ft Worth.”

Taking the exit for Nona’s house, Nat slowed at the stoplight at the end of the ramp, deciding to make a right and grab her grandma’s favorite treat, Starbucks Iced White Chocolate Mocha. Her doctor would be pissed and if Nat’s mom was still alive, she’d lecture.

“But at ninety-nine and counting, I’m thinkin’ she deserved whatever the hell she wants.”

In and out and back on the road, with Nona’s drink and one for herself with two extra shots of espresso, Nat zoned out until she pulled into the circular drive of Nona’s stone-covered ranch style home. Hitting the button clipped to her visor, she pulled into the garage.

Clicking the button for the door to close as soon as her car was inside, she shut off the engine, grabbed the coffee from the console, and headed into the kitchen. Something about Nona’s house had always felt so warm and inviting. It had been Nat’s haven from the horrors of puberty, the loss of her parents in a freak accident, and every other weird thing that she’d ever endured.

Slipping out of her leather jacket and letting it drop into the antique telephone table in the hallway, she called out, “Hello! Nona!”

“In here, Donatella,” came her quick reply as clear as a bell and just as strong as the lady herself.

Walking over the threshold of the library, her grandmother’s favorite spot in the house and absolutely the most lived in, Nat went straight to the lace-covered table sitting in front of the five floor-to-ceiling bowed windows that gave Nona a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree view of the neighborhood. Taking the chair that had been hers for as long as she could remember, she handed her grandmother her cup then sat back with a sigh of relief.

Sipping her white chocolate mocha from the long green straw, Nona looked through the thin lenses of her red and black cat-eye-framed glasses – blasted woman still had great eyesight – with a knowing expression. Raising her eyebrows when Nat looked away, the older woman set her coffee on the table and just as blunt as she always was, asked, “So, are you gonna tell me about the girl, your dreams, or the man in those dreams, first?”