Chapter Eleven

Patrick sat crossed legged on his couch as Teresa paced a gutter in his hardwood floor. She was gesturing wildly as she spoke, her hands flying up and all over. Patrick had to fight to keep from smiling. She was something else when she got all fired up like this. The last time he'd been around a woman with this much passion was a little over two years ago with his wife at her death bed.

He'd been sitting in the chair next to her bed in his dad's mansion up near Lake Tahoe. They'd given up finding a cure and were trying their best to make her comfortable. He remembered her fidgeting against the stack of pillows behind her, while he stared at his hands, feeling for the first and not last time, dead inside.

The chemo had weakened her immune system to the point that she was contracting illnesses like the circus attracted patsies. She'd patted his check and told him to stop feeling sorry for himself, that she was the one dying not him. She'd burst into a fit of laughter that had quickly turned into a fit of coughing.

Patrick pushed the upsetting thought from his mind and focused on the woman in front of him.

Teresa tossed her bangs off her forehead then slowed her pace. "All this time, I'd thought I was still here because I needed to make sure that my brothers were taken care of, but it's more than that. They're in danger, if they weren't they wouldn't be in protective custody."

He'd originally thought she'd be more resistant to his surety that her brothers were in protective custody, but she'd taken to the idea immediately. It'd made sense to her too. It was the only explanation for why they couldn't find them anywhere and why Teresa's boss, a man who had some deep seeded feelings for her, would be so cavalier about her family's disappearance.

"I have to help them. I have to figure out who killed me and stop him from killing anyone else." She turned on him, pointing a dainty finger in his face. "And you have to help me."

He reached out to her; it was becoming something of a habit. She smirked at him and lifted an eyebrow. He shrugged, then patted the couch next to him. "Have a seat."

She crossed her arms and swiveled her hips, but then took a large step forward followed by a quick one, and sat down inches from where his hand rested. "What?"

He drummed his fingers on the smooth leather cushion near her hip. "All right. I'll help you, but before I do, I need to know everything you do. What's the last thing you remember before you… before you became a ghost?"

Why couldn't he say "before you died?" Heat flushed through his veins, and glanced over his shoulder toward the thermostat. It was still set at seventy-two degrees. He turned his gaze to the window. Low clouds hung in the sky. It wasn't hot. Why was he so warm? He unbuttoned the top button on his shirt and swallowed.

She blinked. "Oh, um…"

"Don't you remember?"

She pursed her lips and stared off into space. "I remember Bosco going over the briefing of the Tourneau Cartel Case. We had a sting. I was frustrated about something, but I can't remember what. We'd found a place where the heads of the cartel were going to meet. We were all given assignments—Cho and I were to enter through an emergency exit on the second floor of a rundown old factory while the other teams took entrances on the ground level and bird's-eye views from nearby buildings." She paused, pursing her lips as she thought. "We went in through a window and…"

"Yes?" If only he could hypnotize her they would have everything, but Patrick just wasn't sure how he'd do that if he couldn't touch her.

Touch was an important part of the process; it allowed him to trigger the hypnotic state and retrieve the memories buried deep in the psyche—something as small as a pat on the shoulder, holding hands, or brushing back a lock of hair could do all that. Not that he'd ever brushed back a lock of hair before. Teresa just happened to have a lock hanging in her face. Regardless, touch clearly wasn't an option here. He'd just have to do the best he could.

"I don't… remember."

He turned to her, moving his knee onto the couch, and his arm onto the backrest. "The memory's there—sometimes coming at it from a different direction can help. Take a deep breath."

"I can't breathe," she said with a hint of petulance in her tone. "Dead."

"Do it."

She made a show of breathing in deep, lifting her shoulders and puffing out her chest, but rolled her eyes in the process. "Now what?"

"For starters, a little less sarcasm would be nice."

She scrunched her nose. "Sorry."

"It's okay. Now I want you to close your eyes and concentrate."

Her eyes shut, her long dark lashes fanned out over the tops of her cheeks.

"What do you see?"

She shook her head a little and threw her hands up. "A hall?"

"Good. What do you smell? Hear?"

She sniffed. "It's musty and dank and…" she smiled. "Roasted duck."

"What?"

"Cho had roasted duck for dinner before the sting. It was faint, but still there."

He quirked his lips up.

She was silent for a moment. "Cho is with me. We're at a T in the hallway. He goes right and I go straight."

"What happens next?"

"I try to connect with Bosco and the team, I don't remember why, but there's radio silence. I enter a room at the end of the hall… there's a bright light and then nothing." She opened her eyes and faced him.

"That's it? Nothing else? You're sure?"

She glanced up and to her left, then shook her head. "That's it."

"No sounds of footsteps, or voices? No cologne or perfume? A rotting rat in a corner? What did the room look like? Was it empty? Was it dirty? Were there exposed beams or boards on the floor?"

"I don't know—I can't remember."

He nodded. "Okay. Good enough."

"Good enough?" She threw her hands up. "I gave you nothing. Wait, that's not true, I gave you 'we went through a window' and 'roast duck.'"

He shrugged, tilting his head first one direction and then the other. "Nonsense, it was very helpful. And I wouldn't be surprised if more came to you later." Victims of serious traumas with memory loss would often get their memories back in a slow trickle. He'd witnessed this on many occasions while working with the Feds.

She scoffed. "How was that helpful?"

"When you saw the bright light, could you smell roast duck?"

She screwed up her face. "What?" She looked down and sniffed again. "No. Why?"

"Cho wasn't with you when this went down—he's in the clear."

She sat up straight. "He was never in question!"

He waved her off. "If you'd smelled roast duck, he would be. Also, you were cut off from everyone else, which was either a coincidence or on purpose. I don't believe in coincidences, so—"

"You think someone intentionally had me killed? That I wasn't just in the wrong place at the wrong time?"

He tapped his finger to his lip. "Possibly, but I don't think so. It seems more likely that everyone was cut off from everyone else. Either way, it highly suggests an inside job. Someone who knew where you were going and had knowledge of how to use the radios."

"That's any number of people," she said.

"True." That kind of operation would be heavily worked—with lots of people involved, and not just the officers who were part of the sting. He'd have to think of a way to narrow that down. "What can you tell me about the Tourneau Cartel?"

"They sell guns on the black market; have been working the circuit in Sacramento for the last fifteen years. The cartel itself is behind the deaths of at least a couple dozen people that we know of, including an undercover cop, but we've never been able to tie anything to the top tier. It's always the grunt men who take the fall. They're dangerous and cunning. The cartel heads, made up of the Tourneau brothers, Rob and Paul, Nathaniel Krauss, and James Wood, haven't so much as been in the same room together since the nineties that we know of, in fact, that was why we had the sting going—they were all going to be there together."

He needed more. Needed personal information—needed to know where to start digging and who to talk to. "Did any of these men have any particular interests or hobbies? Like golf, or prostitutes, gambling, or a fondness for cherimoya?"

She pulled her chin back. "What's a cherimoya?"

"It's a lovely fruit with an intoxicating mix of tropical flavors—it looks and has the texture of snot though."

She arched a brow at him. "Uh, huh."

"You must try it some time."

She grinned. "I can't. I'm dead."

He frowned and the heat in the room hit him like a brick wall. He took a deep breath and ran a hand through his curls. "Right. It's easy to—"

"Forget," they said at the same time.

"I know. I've been forgetting too. Being like this—it's disconcerting." She stared at her hands in her lap, then chuckled and glanced over at him. "Okay, let me think. Hobbies. The Tourneau brothers keep a low profile as does Wood. We don't have a lot on them. Wood has a family, a big mansion, and stays mostly to himself. The Tourneau brothers like to eat at nice restaurants and to date influential women, women who I'd doubt would give you anything even if they had something to give. The brothers aren't exactly forthcoming to anyone out of the ring. And all of them share a lawyer who charges a thousand dollars an hour. He's the best defense attorney in the state."

"What about Krauss?" Patrick asked. "Anything on him?"

Teresa leaned forward and rested her elbows on her knees. "Yeah, actually. He's a collector of fine art. Mostly paintings. We almost arrested him for purchasing a stolen painting two years ago, but by the time we got the warrant, it was gone…" She glanced at him, her eyes went blank, and she sucked in a gasp.

He leaned toward her. "What? What is it?"

"The room was full of crates. The room with the white light. There was a table laid out with weapons on it. There were bodies—they were all dead, and back, leaning against a crate, was a painting."

"What kind of painting?" There was no painting on the manifest.

"There was a pond with a bridge over it, and lily pads." She shrugged.

A wide smile split across his face. "Well done, Teresa. You just got us our first lead."