Simon Says_. Walk (Kate Morgan #6)(66)
Author: Dale Mayer

He wasn’t sure what would happen if he tried it again, but also, with Edgar coming to him pretty quickly, Simon wasn’t sure he wanted to take a chance either. Yet he immediately grabbed his jacket again and was transported instantly to a small dark room. He called out, “Samantha?”

 

But it wasn’t the room as much as an odd sensation that had him immediately going quiet. He watched a woman—and he didn’t know whether it was Samantha or not—frozen in fear. The action was happening, like in a still-motion movie set. Something old, something creepy was going on. The back of someone slowly climbing the stairs, while, in his hand, he had a belt that he was whacking against his fist, a closed fist.

 

Although every step was slow and determined, it wasn’t a race up the stairs. It was calculated, moving slowly toward something that he evidently looked forward to. Simon winced, knowing exactly what that end result would be. He didn’t know who was involved, whether it was a current scene being played right now or some old situation, or if it was somebody who he could help or somebody now well past help.

 

Simon jerked back to his own surroundings because he heard someone coming.

 

Paying Edgar, Simon quickly took the treat and walked slowly back to the couch, where he sat down, still a little disoriented, and stared down at the pretzel. “What the hell was that?” he muttered.

 

He could try it again, but he needed a little bit more sustenance, not to mention a little bit more clarity in his head before he did. He couldn’t place where he’d been, couldn’t place anything about it, just that vision of a man walking up the stairs with a belt in his hands. And that was terrifying enough, but also knowing that the person in the room upstairs was terrified and knew what was coming added to the terror. Yet Simon was not able to help. That was always the hardest.

 

What he couldn’t do yet was place a timeline on it. Was this something that had already happened recently, would happen shortly, or, indeed, had happened a very long time ago. That was one of the big challenges that Simon faced when he did this psychic work.

 

And he couldn’t really talk to anybody about this. Hence his grandmother’s own loneliness during her psychic period too. She had been very gifted, and yet she had worked at it, possibly because she had nothing else in her life, except for those all-too-few years with Simon. She’d sacrificed everything else in order to have this gift. None of it even made any sense to Simon, and that was his fallback response anytime he thought about it.

 

He figured that, as long as these messages, these visions, didn’t make sense, then he could ignore them. Except when Kate needed whatever he could give, did he realize this pull to do something with his gift. The trouble was, doing something didn’t always give him the answers that he was looking for. He slowly ate his hot pretzel, sipping the fresh-made coffee.

 

As soon as he started to feel better, he kept looking back at his jacket, wondering. And not able to ignore it, he got up and picked it up again. Only this time, whatever was there had reduced down to a fraction of what he had seen before. It was distant, faint, as if he’d used up whatever energy had been there.

 

He pondered that, as he put down his jacket once more, wondering how to get that vision back again, or was it gone forever in the ethers? If it was gone forever this time, did that mean that every time this happened he had a one-shot chance at it?

 

Again, more questions and really no answers. He grabbed his laptop, answered a bunch of emails, told his foreman he wouldn’t be in today, checked in with Lisa Sands via email, and, when his phone rang not too much later, he wasn’t surprised to see it was Lisa. “Hey, how are you?”

 

She snorted. “What do you mean, how am I? I’m fine. How are you?” she asked. “You’re the one who ended up being attacked.”

 

“Isn’t that the truth. Did you see anything?” he asked curiously.

 

“No, sure didn’t. I wish I did. I saw you as I came back to the shelter. I presumed you were coming to us, but I … I didn’t know.”

 

“No, and I don’t remember either,” he admitted ruefully.

 

She hesitated, then asked, “Is there any chance you had a lot of money on you?” she asked in a timid tone.

 

He heard the hope in her voice and yet also maybe a sense of disgust that she felt compelled to ask. He half smiled. “No, that’s not why I had been coming in the first place. I rarely carry that much cash on me, unless I intend to dispose of it fairly quickly,” he shared, with a note of humor.

 

“And we’ve been very grateful for every penny that’s come our way,” she stated.

 

“I know that, and I’ll be by with a little bit more in a few days. However, I’m not traveling too far right now, given the state that I am in.”

 

“I don’t think you should be traveling at all. I’m worried that it wasn’t random and that somebody was after you.”

 

He didn’t say anything to that, not sure how much Kate had told Lisa about the current cases they were working on.

 

Then Lisa added, in a different tone, “Your Kate is an interesting person.”

 

The use of the possessive pronoun surprised him. “She’s a very talented woman,” he replied. “And she comes from her heart.”

 

“Yes, of course,” Lisa agreed immediately. “I didn’t mean to imply anything other than that.”

 

“Oh, I’m not worried about that. Kate has helped me a lot, and, every once in a while, I’ve been able to help her. So I presume that’s why I was coming to talk to you,” he suggested, with a note of confusion in his tone, “but I really can’t remember what happened then.”

 

“And that’s quite possibly what you were coming here for. I did tell Kate everything I knew about Mary and Elizabeth and, of course, Patricia,” she said, her voice deepening in pain. “To think about these poor women, what they already suffered, and then to turn around and be dealt more of same? It’s … so wrong.”

 

“It is,” Simon agreed, “and it’s one of the reasons why everybody fights so hard to find out who did this and make sure that they pay.”

 

“But making them pay isn’t always the answer,” Lisa noted. “Usually people who do this stuff either don’t care or are so embroiled in their own pain that they can’t see any other way out.”

 

“And yet why would somebody, who’s in pain themselves, do this?” he asked out loud.

 

“I don’t know,” Lisa admitted, “but, over the years, we’ve certainly seen more than enough circumstances that made us wonder how any of us survive this craziness called life.”