A Stranger's Touch Page 6

  All she wanted to do was curl up like a baby and cry. But she had to hold it together somehow. So she’d feigned a cockiness she didn’t feel. And came across sounding like a bitchy runway diva.

  “That uniform can’t be comfortable,” Stafford said, his tone matter-of-fact. “As we head further north, it’s going to get cooler. You’ll need something warm to wear.”

  Her uniform. She’d forgotten she still had it on. She hadn’t taken the time to change back into her street clothes, a direct violation of her father’s rules. Used to be the neighbors respected the police. These days, the blue uniform was an invitation, for anything from finding a lost cat to having your house vandalized.

  She smoothed the sweatshirt across her lap, the fabric soft and warm like a comfy bathrobe. Maggie opened her mouth to apologize, gulping at the air like a fish on a hook.

  “Thanks,” she said, instead.

  She looked up in time to see Stafford’s lips twitch. “You’re forgiven.”

  Forget the diva routine. Or the strong woman act. Clearly, Stafford wasn’t buying either. Psychic powers or not, this man could see through bullshit a mile away. Hers or anyone else’s, she suspected.

  Maggie sighed and, fumbling with fingers that felt like leaded weights, she undid the top button of her shirt.

  * * *

  Tension stirred in Stafford’s belly. And lower. He swallowed. “You’re going to change ... now?”

  “Wasn’t that the idea?”

  Material rustled. Maggie’s scent, warm and sweet, slammed into him as her shirt opened.

  Stafford focused on the road, on the way the headlights bounced off the solid white line. He grabbed his coffee and took a sip. It burned his tongue, then his throat. Not the only parts of him on fire.

  “You’re quite the gentleman.”

  “How so?”

  “Keeping your eyes on the road.”

  He might have said “my pleasure,” but his pleasure would have involved taking a damned good look. Some gentleman.

  “You don’t have to worry. I’ve got a T-shirt on under my uniform.”

  Of course, she had. What was he expecting? That she’d flash him? Strip down to a skimpy bra? A lacey number in fire engine red?

  Where was his head? He was fantasizing about a woman who was searching for her lost boy. Maggie’s eyes smoldered with pain, not passion.

  He reached for the car’s heater and turned it to defrost, eliminating the steam that had crept onto the windshield. His side, mostly. He cleared his throat, wishing his controls were as easy to adjust.

  “There’s some food back there, too. Cheese and crackers, pepperoni sticks, beef jerky–”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Eat something, anyway.”

  “Look, I told you–”

  “You’ve got to keep up your strength. Or you’ll be no help to Davie when we find him.”

  Using her kid as a tactic was low but, if it got some food into her, it would be worth it. When she still hesitated, he added, “There’s ginger ale in the small bag. It’ll settle your stomach.”

  From the corner of his eye, he saw her body tense. “How did you know my stomach–”

  “You’re the mother of a missing child. Of course you’re sick with worry.”

  Her shoulders relaxed. A fraction. Even if he could read minds, did she really believe he’d violate her thoughts to discover something so obvious? The unspoken accusation hissed in his ears like static.

  How many times did he have to relearn the same lesson? Compassion didn’t work. Not for him. To give it guaranteed a host of occupational hazards – wary expressions, nervous titters, doors bolted tight against him. That’s how things went when he showed a little empathy.

  And get it? Forget it.

  All because people feared he could probe their secret thoughts. Stafford thanked the gods his talents revolved around reading objects and not minds. He could do without the onslaught of people’s feelings. He had enough trouble keeping his own in check. Especially those involving the woman at his side.

  “Have you always been psychic?”

  The usual question. He gave her his stock answer. “Always. So have you.”

  “Me? I’m not psychic.”

  “Sure you are. Everyone is. To one degree or another.”

  He stretched his left leg and hit the metal floor, his knee still bent. They didn’t make compact cars for men his height. Feeling penned in, he turned off the heater and opened his window a crack.

  “You think of a friend and two minutes later that person calls. Everyone has things happen to them that they can’t explain. Maybe it’s our collective unconscious, maybe it’s psychic ability. Whatever you want to call it, it exists. In all of us.”

  “You’re talking about coincidence.”

  “Our terminology is different, that’s all. Think of it as a cop’s instinct, a gut feeling for a case.”

  She turned her head toward the window, away from him. The dismissal hurt. More than anyone else, he wanted Maggie to understand him. Although, he wasn’t sure why it mattered.

  Maybe that brief contact on the front steps of the police station fused them together in some way. From that first time she’d touched him, he’d tuned into her like a satellite dish. He’d never felt that kind of connection with anyone else. Not since he was fourteen.

  The car passed a road sign. Even though they’d just filled the tank, Stafford automatically checked the gas gauge. They had more than enough fuel to see them to the next reasonably sized town. In the meantime, he had fifty kilometers of road construction to navigate in the dark.

  “Why did you react that way on the stairs?”

  Talk about coincidence. Hadn’t he just been thinking about the same thing? Maybe Maggie was the mind reader.

  Ten years ago, his male ego would have avoided the question. Back then he still protected the scared, angry kid of his youth. “I told you.”

  “My soul packs a wallop,” she said, her voice flat and unbelieving. “But you didn’t flinch when I ... when you held me at the schoolyard.”

  So, he wasn’t the only one with an ego to protect. She couldn’t admit to her weak moment.

  “I was prepared for the contact,” Stafford explained, veering to his right and onto a dirt road, as the detour sign directed. The car pulled to one side when the tires hit the gravel, then rattled steadily as it traveled over the bumpy lane.

  “If I know it’s coming, I can brace myself. Put up a mental barrier.” He liked to think of it as his force field, but he never told anyone that. Too Star Trek.

  “So, when you’re not prepared and someone touches you, the reaction is extreme.”

  No. Not at all. The strength of Maggie’s spirit caused the strong reaction. But she wasn’t ready to hear that again. She’d blocked that part of herself, choosing to live in her head. Just as well to let her think his response was a normal occurrence. It would prevent an incident like the one with Owens in the examination room.

  “Especially, when I’m doing a reading. Please, don’t touch me then.”

  “No worries.”

  Good. One problem avoided. Still, her promise left him disappointed. She’d made it so easily. Was touching him that repugnant?

  “Is that why you wear the gloves?”

  “It’s pretty tough to go through life without using your hands. If I spent all day blocking out information, I’d be exhausted. The gloves act as a buffer.”

  Ahead, Stafford spotted the steady glow of another car’s headlights traveling in the opposite direction. The first vehicle he’d seen for twenty minutes. He switched the car’s lights to low beams.

  “What did you do as a child? How did you avoid touching the other kids?”

  He caught himself cringing and put it in check. “School wasn’t great. Kids like to roughhouse.”

  Beat him up, to be more accurate. Walking home from school, his heart would work overtime, waiting for his attackers. Boys, four or five years older,
would jump out at him from the bushes. Fighting fair didn’t enter into their code of ethics. It didn’t enter into his father’s, either.

  “Is that when you learned how to do this barrier thing?”

  “Yeah, and I started working out. Doing chin-ups on the monkey bars, carrying stuff for neighbors. It made me less ... approachable.” And better able to protect his sister. Or so he’d thought, at the time.

  His partial answer seemed to satisfy Maggie. She turned in her seat to face him. “What about Owens? How did you meet him? Through the FBI?”

  Stafford tapped the wheel with his fingers as he thought. How little could he say without her pursuing the subject? “He heard about me from a case in Florida.”

  “Is that where you’re from?”

  He nodded. “I moved up through Georgia to Virginia. Spent some time at Quantico to study profiling.” And how to kill a man and get away with it.

  “But you’re not with the Bureau any more, right?”

  “It wasn’t a good fit for me.”

  He hadn’t agreed with their methods. And they sure as hell didn’t like his. When the trail he followed heated up, he’d chucked his career without a second thought. They’d given him the tools he needed to help him in his hunt. And that’s all he’d ever wanted from them.

  “From Quantico, I went to Ontario. I worked my way north, now I’m going west.”

  “And how do you find our Canadian winters?”

  “I freeze my ass off. You?”

  He looked over at her and saw her slight smile. “Absolutely.”

  That reaction hooked him and left him hungry for more. Now he knew how stand-up comics felt. The response of his one-person audience was addictive.

  “My first year, it snowed in September.”

  Her smile widened. A hair’s width. There’d been no joy for him. Not at the time.

  Quickly, he’d grown to love the winters. A stark blanket of snow appealed to him. It made everything look clean, pure. “I hear it’s character-building.”

  “It’s that, all right. Same as being a psychic, I guess.”

  “Let’s hope so.” Stafford settled back into his seat, relieved that she’d finished asking him about the past.

  A few drops hit the windshield. Stafford looked down at the dash, checking the location of the wipers in case he needed them.

  A blur of material flew past his ear as Maggie tossed the top of her uniform into the backseat. Her perfume remained up front, orbiting his head. The rest of his body responded like a sixteen-year-old boy who’d just discovered girls.

  “What do your special powers tell you now?”

  He ahemmed away the thickness in his throat. “About what?”

  “Where my son is?”

  Stafford swallowed the last mouthful of cold coffee, buying time. “I don’t know. I feel we’re on the right path. We’ll stop in at all the stores along the way. Ask if anyone’s seen him.”

  “That’s the limit of your psychic ability?” Her late-night DJ voice took on a hard edge. “What you’re suggesting sounds like good, old-fashioned police work to me.”

  He shifted his foot from the gas pedal to the brake. The vehicle slowed until he could make out individual stones on the gravel road. “We can turn back here if you don’t like the way things are going.”

  For a minute, Stafford thought she might take him up on his offer. He almost cheered. Then her shoulders slumped. The tires thumped along, their uneasy rhythm counting out the seconds before she spoke again.

  “Sorry. It’s just that ... I was expecting more from you.”

  “Like?”

  “A street address would be helpful.”

  Damn straight. He wished it worked that way. “It’s not like reading a newspaper. Images come to me in flashes, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. I’m not always sure how everything fits together.”

  “Then what are we doing here?” Her hard edge softened. Her words became a victim’s plea, probably wondering how she’d ended up in the middle of this horror.

  He wished he had an answer for her. One for himself, even. “How about some of that ginger ale?”

  * * *

  Maggie twisted the bottle’s cap, unsure if she could keep anything down.

  Distorted images spun in her brain. The constant barrage of terror, real and imagined, coiled around her gut. Ripped apart from her son, she felt like a junkie on withdrawal. Her need wasn’t for drugs, but for Davie – his voice, his smile, his smell, his touch.

  Nerves raw, she’d even lashed out at the one person helping her. Stafford.

  He’d met her in hell, when she was out of her mind, grappling for any lead, even a psychic one. She wanted to blame him for their ill-conceived search – and Lord knows, she’d tried – but the responsibility was hers. She’d dragged him into this, begged him to come with her, then slapped him in the face with her criticisms.

  She didn’t doubt his sincerity. Clearly, he believed all the mumbo-jumbo. Enough to quit his day job with the big shot investigators. But he had no more idea of her son’s whereabouts than she did.

  The hopelessness of pressing forward dug into her chest. The thought of turning back tore up her insides. Searching for Davie, no matter how faulty her compass, was better than sitting at the station...

  Waiting. Doing nothing.

  Maggie opened her window, the cool air clearing her thoughts. She’d find a way to make it up to Stafford. Pay him extra. Settle his parking tickets. Something. For now, she could at least follow his earthly advice.

  She tipped back the ginger ale and took a sip. Stafford was right. The bubbly sweetness did help settle her stomach. She consumed half then placed the bottle in the cup holder.

  The music on the radio turned to static as they traveled further away from the station’s transmitter. She snapped off the noise and leaned back against the headrest, gazing out the window at the blackness beyond.

  She watched silhouetted clusters of trees and darkened fields zoom past her. Occasionally, a light from a distant farmhouse broke the monotony.

  Maggie closed her eyes and tried to sleep. She prayed that when she woke the nightmare would be over, that she’d find herself tucked in bed, a giggling Davie running in to tickle her awake.

  She’d get up and make them pancakes. Davie’s favorite. And he’d slather an inch of Cool Whip on top of his. Then they’d get dressed and go to the zoo – one of the places she’d always wanted to see with her dad, but there never seemed to be enough time when she was growing up.

  Maggie took her son as often as she could. They’d been just the month before. Or was it at the start of the summer?

  He loved all the animals. Especially the hippos. She liked them too. Partly, for the way their ears twitched. Mostly, for the way Davie would wrap his arms around her legs, laughing with her, as they watched the seven-thousand-pound creatures frolic in the water with the agility of ballerinas.

  They’d grab a couple of hotdogs for lunch then head home. As usual, Maggie would carry Davie into the house, the long walk and the car ride having beckoned him to sleep better than a lullaby.

  She’d hold him tight, feeling him warm against her chest. She’d breathe in the smell of his hair, a mix of baby shampoo, the earth, and that indescribable little boy scent that always made her smile.

  She prayed to wake up to all of that. But sleep never came. Only fear and guilt. And the pair made wretched bunkmates. They took turns grilling her, playing Bad Cop/Bad Cop, with neither providing a sympathetic ear.

  Maggie straightened and rubbed her neck. A blood red strip along the horizon hinted at the sun’s appearance. As the blackness turned into shades of grey, the voices in her head grew fainter. With the light, came new hope. She could meet witnesses. Question them. Follow the trail. Find her son.

  The road curved and a small village came into view. A few stores and houses dotted the highway.

  “Where are we?”

  “Not sure.” Stafford pulled into yet another g
as station, one with a convenience store attached. After eighteen stops, Maggie had lost count. All the little towns looked alike, a muddle of places and faces.

  She twisted the cap of her ginger ale and steadied her hand long enough to take a drink. At every turn, she half expected to see Davie running toward her. She checked every shadow, examined each yard. But there was no sign of her boy. The kaleidoscope of hope and despair jostled around in her stomach, causing a constant commotion that left her feeling as brittle as glass.