A Cop and a Feel: Karmic Consultants, Book 5 Read online

  She’d learned to ignore the void. She was happy as a spectator, brushing against the vibrant lives of those who came into her booth each night of the carnival, filling the emptiness with little pieces, flickering emotions borrowed from each of them.

  But now…

  New emotion swelled inside her in a rush at the vision she’d just seen, the life she’d witnessed. This feeling wasn’t love—not yet, though she felt the echoes of it so strongly in Matt’s touch. No, it was hope. A hope she’d long since given up. That could be her future.

  But the future was always conditional.

  Those images were only a possibility. And they weren’t all she’d seen.

  Splashed in amongst the everyday utopia that could be their future were images bright with blood and thick with death. The red and black-hued scenes threatened their happily ever after.

  Ronna tried to piece through the seemingly random flashes of blood and gore to find a pattern, a way of preventing that darker future, but through it all, the only commonality appeared to be Matt’s green eyes, wide with shock and horror. Macabre carnival images haunted her. The Ferris wheel splattered with blood, people running screaming from a brightly colored booth like her own, blood soaking into ground coated with a sticky mass of popcorn and candy apples.

  “Are you all right?”

  Her face must have gone gray, which made sense since every drop of blood felt like it was rushing toward her pounding heart.

  “I…”

  He was in danger. Officer Matthew Holloway was going to get himself killed. Tonight.

  Ronna had to save him, to protect him from himself, but her brain was overloaded, wild with a thousand images and words that couldn’t fight their way through the clutter. Her mouth opened but her throat closed, emitting not a sound.

  Matt’s gaze shifted again to the curtain behind her and suddenly he yanked his hand out of hers, jumping to his feet. “Shit. There he is.” He grabbed a five out of his pocket and shoved it into her tip jar, already loping toward the doorway. He paused, peering past the curtain, then disappeared through it without even a whisper from the bells before Ronna could do more than register the sudden loss of his presence, his touch.

  She had never had such a strong reading before, nor ever been so strongly affected herself. She would occasionally get strong senses from people, but they were almost always memories that preoccupied or obsessed them. The future glimpses were without exception dim and foggy. Never before had she seen such a vivid Technicolor montage. But this time was different. This time it was her future too. Or it could have been. And those images struck her like tiny hammers pinging against her heart.

  It took far too many long seconds before her brain reengaged and she leapt to her feet, stumbling in a frantic rush after him. The blood…

  “Wait, Matt! You’re in danger!”

  Chapter Two—Save Ferris

  Matt cut through the carnival crowds as quickly as he could without drawing unnecessary attention to himself. His target pushed through the mass of people ahead of him, not seeming to care who turned and glared as he shoved his way through.

  Matt frowned. That was new.

  Fifteen minutes ago, before Matt ducked into the cute palm reader’s booth and his higher brain functions took a time-out, the target had been relaxed and subtle. Blending. Now he looked tense and hurried.

  Shit. What had changed while he was out of Matt’s sight? Had he already done the job? Was this his escape? How could Matt have been so stupid, sitting down with a goddamn palm reader when he was supposed to have eyes on the bastard at all times? A fuckup like that could cost lives. Could have already cost them.

  Matt swore under his breath and increased his pace, forcing an apologetic smile on his face as he threaded through the crowd. He felt naked without a comm. in his ear, but the squad he was working with tonight were beyond paranoid about being overheard by their target. Those who spied on everyone seemed to be the most afraid of being spied on.

  Which meant Matt was on his own tonight—but not unobserved.

  It had been beyond stupid to stop in for a palm reading when lives could very well be at stake—no matter how hot the palm reader was. Damn, I didn’t get her name.

  Unforgivable. The slip with the job, not the fortune-teller’s mystery name. No wonder he’d never been tapped for the organized-crime task force in the past. If all it took was a toffee-skinned Jamaican goddess with short wild reddish curls and a sexy, secretive smile to derail his pursuit of a suspected hit man, he didn’t deserve the job.

  Dammit. What had he been thinking? Or more to the point, what had he been thinking with? Because it sure as hell wasn’t his brain.

  She’d said he had hunches and she was right. He had ducked into her booth on a hunch, let her read him on a hunch—convinced he had time to kill by nothing more than an irrational feeling that his target was going the wrong direction, that he wouldn’t find his victim at the end of the aisle and he’d have to loop back.

  And now Cutter was hurrying as if he’d just committed a crime, drawing attention to himself as he fled…

  He’s a pro. He’d be calm after the job. Blending. He hasn’t done the job yet.

  Matt slowed his own headlong rush through the crowd, confidence returning suddenly. Cutter may be a thug, but he was also a long-time known associate with a reputation for merciless calm. He’d hardly panic after the job. His profile pegged him as more likely to be reckless because he was pissed off, and he’d be pissed off because he couldn’t find his intended victim in the jumbled maze of the carnival.

  The tip the task force had gotten was clear, Cutter had to bump off a “consultant” at the carnival.

  A consultant. The bugs had picked up the word, and no one on the task force had been able to make sense of it. Who was the consultant?

  The palm reader’s face rose to the front of his mind, with the mischievous light in her warm brown eyes and her café-au-lait skin with the darker freckles across her cheekbones and the bridge of her nose.

  Something inside Matt stilled, but he continued trailing Cutter even as his awareness shifted to examine the baseless hunch.

  It couldn’t be her. It would be too much of a coincidence. Why would the mafia take out a hit on a palm reader? And why the urgency? How could she possibly be a threat?

  It didn’t make any sense. His subconscious must be trying to rationalize his preoccupation with her by making her a part of the job. There was no way the Morrissey crime family would be going after hocus-pocus mystics at a carnival. The Morrissey syndicate was under new management with Big Joe on trial for a list of crimes as long as his arm. The new boss, Vito Coretti, may be a relative unknown in the underworld, but a man didn’t get into a position of such power by behaving irrationally. Taking out contracts on palm readers definitely fell into that category of behavior.

  But why schedule the hit at a carnival? A public execution wouldn’t be doing the family any favors, with their apparent new goal to stay under the radar and feign legitimacy as a corporation. Coretti had an appointment tomorrow to finalize a lucrative deal with a company he’d had to woo for months to convince he wasn’t just another thug. The skittish CEO had finally agreed to the deal, so why would Coretti jeopardize it with a public execution only hours before the contracts were to be signed?

  Cutter stopped suddenly, letting the crowd flow around him. Matt ducked around a balloon-animal vendor and tucked himself into the crowd around a face-painting booth in case his target looked behind him. But Cutter, so nicknamed due to his affection for switchblades, didn’t glance back once. He was either cocky that he wasn’t being followed, or already knew that he was. Matt was betting on the latter.

  What was so special about this venue that the hit would have to be done here? Unless this was the only place they could get at the victim.

  Dammit, who was the consultant? And what the hell were they doing here?

  Matt hated not knowing. Especially because he couldn’t shake
the feeling that his superiors knew a helluva lot more than they were telling him.

  He’d been recommended for the organized-crime task force which had fast track to detective written all over it, but no matter how many times he told himself this assignment had the potential to be a huge step forward in his career, it still felt off. Wrong.

  All he had to do was tail Coretti’s hit man, identify his intended target and prevent the hit. By the end of the night the consultant should be in protective custody and Cutter should be turning state’s evidence against his boss.

  Matt knew he wasn’t the only one working the carnival, but the others would be watching him to see how he handled the situation as much as they would be watching the perp. One big practical exam. No pressure.

  Hopefully they hadn’t been watching closely enough to see the boner he had gotten when the Caribbean girl was stroking her fingers across his palm and purring at him about his future.

  Matt shook his head to clear her from it as Cutter ducked around to the far side of the Ferris wheel and out of sight. He quickened his pace and slipped silently into the shadows behind the massive, grinding machinery block just in time to see the hit man yank out a cell phone and begin jabbing buttons on it with sharp, frustrated gestures. He definitely isn’t calling to say the job is complete.

  Cutter spoke too quietly for Matt to make out his words over the clanking of the Ferris wheel and the general din of the revelers beyond it. He couldn’t move closer without exposing himself and giving up his position. Tucked away in the shadows, he was out of view with a clear line of sight. His target could walk right past him and unless he looked directly into the shadows around the engine that drove the Ferris wheel, he would never spot Matt lurking there. So Matt stayed put, trying to read Cutter’s body language to glean some indication of what instructions he was being given now that his target had proved elusive.

  Cutter nodded along with whatever was being told to him, apparently having missed that day in kindergarten when they explained that people speaking to you on phones can’t see you nod. Whatever instructions he was being given, he was agreeable, though he didn’t look any less tense. Matt had a hunch the hit was not being called off, and as the fortune teller had reminded him, his hunches were always right.

  He hadn’t missed his chance to nail Cutter.

  The assassin flipped the phone shut, stowing it in his pocket, and Matt rose up on the balls of his feet, getting ready to move again.

  Then chaos stepped in—bangle bracelets jangling.

  Chapter Three—Palmistry to the Rescue!

  Ronna’s panic level reached a new high when Matt’s sandy head disappeared around the back of the Ferris wheel. The image of the gears of the Ferris wheel splattered with blood replayed vividly in her mind’s eye. The crowds swarmed around her, and her heart thudded loudly in her ears. He was going to be killed, and she couldn’t get to him.

  Why were there so many people at the damn carnival? And why were they all moving at an excruciating shuffle pace? Didn’t they realize while they plodded along forming the impenetrable mass of a human herd, the man she was meant to spend the rest of her life with, who was going to give her adorable green-eyed babies and make her laugh until she was ninety-two and too senile to get his jokes anymore, was in peril at this very moment behind the Ferris wheel? So why they the hell weren’t they moving faster?

  Ronna pushed her way through the wall of bodies, too afraid of what might be happening to Matt to toss off apologies as people around her protested her shoving and stomping on feet.

  She had to get to him.

  Not that she’d be much help if she did. Touch-reading was hardly a super-power capable of stopping a speeding bullet, but she was sure she could save him if she was just there with him. He was the love of her life, or at least he would be, and she wasn’t about to let some carnie thug off him behind the Ferris wheel.

  A pocket opened up in the crowd between her and the Ferris wheel, and Ronna sprinted forward, running full tilt around the side of the ride and into the heavy shadows behind it, half expecting to stumble over Matt’s lifeless form. In the moment it took for her eyes to adjust to the relative darkness after the spinning strobes of the carnival, she tried to remember how to breathe, gulping in oxygen. She squinted into the dark, one hand pressed over her drumming heart as a figure materialized out of the shadows in front of her.

  “Matt!”

  Thank God. Ronna took two running steps forward.

  The man in front of her turned toward her. Something was wrong. Ronna slammed on the brakes, her sandals skidding on the sticky asphalt. The form in front of her was too heavyset to be the tall, lean Officer Holloway.

  “I-I’m sorry,” she stammered. “I thought I saw someone come back here.”

  As soon as the words left her lips, Ronna could have kicked herself. He was probably a Ferris wheel operator. If he found Matt skulking back here, the future love of her life would get in trouble with the carnival operators. Which was better than his blood splashing all over the gears, but still…

  “You know, I didn’t see anyone,” Ronna said quickly. A second figure shifted in the shadows to her left. She knew him as soon as he moved. Matt. He was okay. Hiding, which, yeah, was kinda weird, but totally okay. She’d been panicking over nothing. “Nobody here!” she sing-songed to the shadow man, bypassing subtle and going straight to obnoxiously Cinderella-cheerful. “Nobody at all.”

  She tossed the shadowy Ferris wheel operator a loopy smile. He didn’t say much for a carnie. She still couldn’t make him out, but he didn’t seem familiar. She spent most of her time at the carnival in her booth, but she knew most of the regular operators at least on sight.

  He reached toward her, waving something metallic, and Ronna’s vision from Matt’s touch replayed in her mind.

  Oh crap, is that a gun?

  “Get down!”

  The shout came from her left. Matt surged into the open, a gun of his own braced between his hands. Ronna didn’t think. And she didn’t obey. In that split second in the shadow of the Ferris wheel with two armed-and-dangerous men, she couldn’t see anything past the nightmare vision in her mind of Matt’s gorgeous eyes, wide with horror and shock, in a face sprayed with blood. She dove toward him, slamming him to the ground in a tackle worthy of an NFL All Star. The spit of a silencer and the answering deafening report of an unsilenced gun split the shadows.

  Matt grunted as he hit the ground and her weight hit him. Footsteps pounded the dirt nearby, and he rolled, pinning her protectively beneath his body as he twisted to scan the darkness around them, his gun trained on the spot where the gunman had stood.

  The shadows were empty of crazy gun-wielding Ferris wheel operators now, but Matt’s body didn’t relax. He stayed tense above her.

  Tense and whole. He’s alive.

  There wasn’t any moisture where her front was pressed against his, no gushing fluids to indicate excessive bleeding from a mortal wound, but she ran her hands over his torso just to be safe, checking for bullet holes. When her hands hampered his range of movement with the gun he was still pointing into the darker shadows, he knocked them out of his way.

  “Lie still,” he snapped, clearly not appreciating her life-saving tackle or her continued concern for his well-being. He dug into his pocket, shifting his weight so he wasn’t pressing her down into the filthy ground, but still shielding her as he lifted his cell phone, punched a number in with his thumb and pressed it to his ear, never taking his eyes off the shadows or lowering his gun.

  She was close enough to hear the bleeping tone of a dropped call.

  Matt swore and dialed again, snarling another obscenity when the call failed a second time. “Is it too much to ask for a fucking signal?”

  Ronna couldn’t make herself care about crappy cell providers. “You’re alive.”

  “Of course I’m alive. You could have gotten yourself killed. What the hell were you thinking?”

  “I saved your life,” Ro
nna explained patiently. “I ruined his shot.”

  “You ruined my shot.” Matt shoved his phone back into his pocket. “Not to mention my chances of getting a permanent spot on the task force. Damn it.” He rose to a crouch, still alertly surveying the area.

  Ronna sat up as well, taking stock of her now-filthy Madame Ramona getup. There was no fabric on earth capable of withstanding being ground into popcorn, cotton-candy residue and Ferris wheel grease and coming out unscathed. Her entire outfit would have to be burned when she got home to avoid contaminating the rest of her closet.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing back here?” Matt straightened and helped her—none too gently—to her feet.

  He would probably react badly if she told him she had envisioned his death and followed him out of her booth to protect him from a horrific Ferris wheel-related death. He didn’t seem to be in a very receptive mood.

  “You left your ring in my booth,” she lied, hiding her hand in her skirts as she worked her grandmother’s wide gold band off her thumb and rolled it into her palm. She held it out to him with her most dazzlingly innocent smile. “I thought you’d want it back.”

  He didn’t spare the ring a glance. “It isn’t mine. I don’t wear jewelry.”

  “Were you following that guy?” she asked, as if she weren’t perfectly aware that he had been stalking the maniacal gun-toting carnie.

  Matt shot her a glare, grabbed her arm and began edging them both back toward the well-lit main causeway crowds, peering suspiciously into every shadow along the way. “It doesn’t concern you.”

  Ronna dug in her heels. “Excuse me? I just saved your life. That man shot at us. I think that entitles me to a little explanation.”

  “You aren’t entitled to shit. You should have stayed out of it.”

  “I’m in it now,” Ronna protested. “Shouldn’t I at least know what I’m in?”