“I radioed for an ambulance when you passed out,” he told her.
She blinked at him. “Cancel it, will you?”
“Are you sure?”
She nodded. “It’s not the first time this has happened to me.” It was the first time it had knocked her senseless, however. “And I didn’t pass out.”
“You didn’t?”
She shook her head. “Can I sit up now?”
He nodded, extended a hand, and helped her into a sitting position. Then he tapped the microphone that was clipped to his collar, calling her attention to his corded neck, and spoke in cop jargon. She was pretty sure he was canceling the ambulance he’d ordered for her.
She was getting to her feet, and he was still holding her, helping her. He said, “So if that wasn’t passing out, what was it? Some kind of seizure?”
She studied his face. Hell, she was going to have to tell him. It wasn’t life and death, or even minor crime solving, but then again, who was she to say? It could be important. He was the man of her dreams, after all. And it would be cruel not to tell him. “It wasn’t a seizure. It was...a vision.”
His brows went up. “A vision. As in...a psychic vision?”
“I get them sometimes. I think when I touched your hand...” She watched his face, waiting for one of the looks she had come to expect: the blatant disbelief of her overly critical father, who would call her a compulsive liar and probably punish her for it; the horrified fear of her zealot mother, who would call her evil, offensive to God, and would probably punish her for that.
The man’s face betrayed no emotion, neither skepticism nor fear. “So you’re psychic, then?”
She swallowed her fears. “Yeah. Just not usually about anything important. I do have some advice for you, though.”
“Really? For me?”
She nodded, staring into his eyes. She didn’t tell him about her dreams, about her having seen his face in her mind for such a long, long time. She didn’t ask him if he was under any sort of curse that he knew of. No sense giving him further reason to doubt her sanity.
She wanted to see this man again. And she kind of thought she needed to. So, she’d start him off easy. And even then, he probably wouldn’t believe her. No one ever believed her.
He walked with her the few steps to her car, opened her door for her, waiting patiently for her advice.
She stood beside the open door, lost in her explorations of his face. God, he was handsome. “You’re, um...taking a group of teenage boys camping this weekend?”
He blinked, clearly surprised that she would know that. “Yeah. Over at Letchworth. It’s a departmental program, and it’s my turn.”
“It’s a very, very bad idea.”
He frowned at her. “That’s what your vision was about? My camping trip?”
She nodded. “I saw torrential rains, high winds, soaked, miserable kids, and tents getting torn to shreds.” She frowned. “And I got a bad feeling—something about a tree. Big pine, lots of dead branches.”
“The one where the vultures roost,” he muttered.
“Could be. I didn’t see any vultures. Still...if I were you I’d change the date.”
She got into her car. He stood there, holding her door open, staring in at her. “You’re not kidding about this, are you?”
“Nope. If I were making it up, I’d predict something much more important. I mean, this isn’t earth-shattering, but you might stay drier if you listen.” She shrugged. “I may not change the world with my visions, but I’m never wrong.”
“Never, huh?”
“Well. Almost never,” she said, recalling that she’d made a complete fool of herself with the chief of police this morning.
“Then how come you didn’t know I was sitting here clocking your speed?”
She pursed her lips, saw the twinkle of humor in his eyes, and knew he wasn’t ridiculing her. He didn’t believe her either, but he wasn’t being mean. He wasn’t calling her a liar or a sinner. “I’ve been asking myself the same thing, to be honest. If I hadn’t had the vision of getting to the bank too late, I wouldn’t have been speeding. I wouldn’t have been stopped. And I wouldn’t have been late. As it is ...” She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe we were supposed to meet.” That was it. She knew it the moment she said it, with a certainty she rarely felt about anything.
“You think?”
“I do.” She stuck her hand out the window. “Megan Rose.”
“So it said on your driver’s license,” he said. But he took her hand in his, and it was warm, smooth, and firm. “Sam Sheridan.”
“Good to meet you, Sam.”
He lifted his dark, thick brows, maybe a little surprised she had used his first name. He shouldn’t be. The man belonged on a police-hunks calendar. And besides, she’d known him forever. It wasn’t her fault he had no way of knowing that. He was far more stunning, she thought, in person.
“I hope next time it’ll be under more pleasant circumstances,” he said.
And there would be a next time, she had to make sure of that. “Will you do me a favor, Sam?”
“What’s that?”
“A favor? It’s something nice you do for someone else.” He smirked at her, and she smiled in return. “If you should take my advice about camping this weekend, and something important results from it, would you let me know?”
He frowned at her, obviously unsure she was being serious.
She shrugged. “You never know. One of these days, this so-called gift of mine might actually do something useful. So will you call if you get the feeling it has?”
“Sure I will.”
She smiled, tugged a little card from her purse, and handed it to him.
He looked at it. “Celestial Bakery?”
“You were expecting me to tell fortunes for a living, I’ll bet.”
He shrugged, tucking the card into his pocket. “I’ll call.”
“I hope you do.”
She fastened her seat belt, put the car into gear, and pulled into the nearest driveway to turn around, since it was already too late to make the bank.
Sam stood in the woods of Letchworth State Park, huddled with the boys currently enrolled in the Pinedale Police Department’s Cop-Camp program. All the kids were shivering and soaked to the skin. Their tents hadn’t held up to the gale-force winds, and he doubted these trees were going to hold up against them much longer. He could have kicked himself for ignoring Megan Rose. Not that he thought her claims of psychic powers were anything. Hell, she could have figured this storm was coming from watching the Weather Channel.
Though the local weather reports had completely missed it.
Something creaked ominously overhead, and her voice whispered through his brain, yet again, the way it had been doing for three consecutive nights now.
I got a bad feeling. Something about a tree...
He looked up at the tall, haunted-looking tree the kids referred to as the Vulture Roost, as the woman’s words whispered through his memory.
Big pine, lots of dead branches.
A limb creaked and groaned.
“Everyone out from under the tree!” Sam shouted. As he said it, he herded the cold, wet teenagers out of the relative shelter of the woods and into the open, and the full fury of the storm. “Move it!” They moved it. And when they were standing in the clearing that had seemed like such a perfect campsite, he heard a loud CRACK and saw an overweight limb crash to the ground right where they’d all been standing, and a chill shot all the way to his toes.