And he didn’t want never to see Marlie Keen again. If she wasn’t involved in the case, and officially he had to accept that, then he’d have to arrange something else. He didn’t like what he was feeling, but it was too damn strong to ignore.
Marlie paced, alternately swearing and wiping away tears. Damn Hollister! He made her so angry, she could have cheerfully taken a swing at him, had he been there right then. But Hollister was the least of her problems. The knowing was definitely coming back, maybe a little altered from before. Maybe she wasn’t as empathie as she had been; maybe there was a bit more clairvoyance. How else could she have known that Hollister was watching a baseball game? How else could she have anticipated his answer right down to the second? That had never happened before.
She had been thinking about him, unwillingly, but he had definitely been on her mind when the uneasiness, the sense of danger, had swept over her. She had automatically thought it had something to do with him, but it hadn’t; he had just been so strongly in her mind that she hadn’t realized the two weren’t connected. That meant she had two problems; no, three. One: Her extrasensorial skills were coming back, in fits and starts. She didn’t want them to, but they were, and she’d have to deal with it. She pushed that acknowledgment away, because though this problem would have the biggest effect on her life, the others were more immediate.
Two: Detective Hollister was going to be a big complication. He already was. He made her angrier than anyone else she’d ever met, and he did it without even trying. He was a big Neanderthal, sarcastic and skeptical, and she could feel his own anger blazing at her. He was so intense that she almost yielded to the impulse to hide her face every time she saw him. He burned with the sort of fierce masculinity that made women turn and go all google-eyed when they watched him. Marlie knew she didn’t have much experience with men, but that didn’t mean she was stupid, either. Her reactions to him were too intense, out of all proportion. The last thing she needed right now was a sexual attraction to handle, especially when nothing could come of it. Groaning, she realized that Hollister felt the same reluctant attraction. He had called her “babe.” Probably the only thing that had held him back was his suspicion of her, and that couldn’t last in the absence of evidence. Men like him didn’t hesitate when they wanted a woman; once he admitted that she had nothing to do with Nadine Vinick’s murder, she would have to fend him off.
Which brought her to problem number three, the one so distressing that she had put off thinking about it: The evil she had felt, which had made her so uneasy, had the same … texture, or personality, as the force she had felt the night Nadine Vinick had been murdered. It was the same man. He was still out there, and his evil was focusing on someone else. It was unformed as yet; she had caught only an echo of it. But he was going to act again, and she was the only hope the police had, and his intended victim had, to stop him in time.
She had nothing to go on. No face, no name. Eventually, though, she would be able to focus on him, stay with him, and he would make some mistake that would tell her his identity.
She would have to work with the police, and that meant working with Hollister. She had no doubt it would be an uncomfortable, difficult situation, but she had no choice. She was caught up in this and had no way of getting out.
7
MARLIE HAD JUST FINISHED DRESSING THE NEXT MORNING when the heavy knock at the front door made her jump, then frown with both annoyance and alarm. She had no doubt who was pounding on her door at seven-twenty in the morning, and it didn’t take any special skills to figure it out.
The best way to deal with him, though, was to not let him know that she reacted to him in any way. He would see her anger as a weakness, and heaven help her if he should get even a hint of the unwilling attraction she felt. He was too aggressive to let either circumstance pass by.
She wasn’t about to invite him in. She had to get to work, and she had no intention of letting him make her late. She got her purse and had her keys in hand as she marched to the front door. When she opened it, he was standing almost in her face, leaning with one muscular arm braced against the frame and the other one raised to pound on her door again. The closeness of his body made her catch her breath, a reaction she hid by stepping out and turning to close the door behind her. Unfortunately, he didn’t move back, and she fetched up solidly against him, all heat and hard muscle. She was practically in his arms; all he had to do was close them around her, and she would be caught.
Grimly she concentrated on locking the door, trying to ignore the situation. The brief look she had had at his face told her that he was ill tempered this morning, but now she sensed an alarming male edginess beneath the temper. He was as fractious as a stallion scenting a mare in season.
The mental image was unfortunate, and so apt that her heart began beating wildly. With her back turned to him as she wrestled with the stubborn lock, she was suddenly acutely aware of the press of his body against her buttocks. An unmistakable ridge had formed, thick and hard, blatant in intent.
The lock finally clicked into place. She stood motionless, frozen with indecision. If she moved, she would be rubbing against him; if she didn’t move, he might take it as an invitation. She closed her eyes against the insidious temptation to simply turn and face him, giving him silent permission by giving him access. Only the certainty that it wouldn’t work, that she would freeze under the onslaught of a six-year-old horror, kept her from giving in. She couldn’t go through that again.
She forced her voice to work. “What do you want, Detective?” Then she could have bit her tongue. Bad choice of words, under the circumstances. With his erection insistently nudging her, what he wanted was obvious.