Chapter 23: Lost Again

Zach blinked. Didn’t save who? “Dolores is dead?”
Grace nodded, her face pale, her neck bruised.
His hands found her other then squeezed both of them. He sat on the edge of the bed. “What happened?”
“He came up behind me. I never heard him.”
“So she got shot anyway,” he said.
Her crestfallen face made him wish he hadn’t been so blunt. He took a deep breath and pushed what grief he had over Dolores to the back of his mind. He needed to concentrate on the living for once.
“I guess you couldn’t change what was supposed to happen. Maybe you weren’t supposed to change it.”
His words sounded odd to his ears, but he knew Grace believed in what she said. She had a gift in her own mind. Even if he didn’t understand he wanted to.
“You don’t understand. She wasn’t supposed to die. That’s why she talked to me. I’ll go see her again.”
Coughs rocked her and Zach poured water into a glass. He handed the liquid to her. She drank, then handed it back to him.
“What are you doing?” he asked when she swung her legs to the side of the bed. She looked too pale to stand.
“Going to see Dolores before they take her away.”
“This is nuts, Grace. I don’t know how you know she was going to be killed, but seeing her isn’t going to change anything.”
“Zach, go home. You didn’t believe me then. Why would you believe me now?”
“Because this time I want to.”
She paused, her gaze searching and probing him. She stood, looking wobbly. “Go. She won’t talk to me when you’re there.”
“If you go back in time,” he started, not believing his question. “Will I remember you?”
“No.”
Desperation fueled his next move. For the first time since Dolores he wanted to trust someone. So he strode around the bed to Grace, took a gentle hold of her head, and kissed her hard so she would understand that he felt something for her.
Then he left before she could say anything.
***
Zach’s kiss and her body’s subsequent reaction to it, had Grace sitting back down on the bed.
If his touch had caused a kaleidoscope of colors, his kiss created a storm. Both inside and outside. Her body thrummed with the anticipation of love that kiss showed her and the future she’d have. She’d be thirty tomorrow and her gift would probably be gone. She just had to climb back in bed. She’d have Zach and no dead people talking to her.
“Damn.”
“What are you doing out of bed?” A brisk efficient nurse whisked into her room. “You need to rest.”
Her resolve strengthened, she said, “I want to see her.”
The nurse cocked her head and her face took on a pinched expression. “Okay. Let me get a wheelchair, then.”
So Grace waited thankful that she hadn’t had to convince anyone that she should see her landlord. Everyone understood.
The nurse came back then wheeled Grace to Dolores’ bedside, leaving her alone with the dead woman.
“Dolores?”
Her dead landlord opened her eyes. “Help me.”
***
Back in time again, Grace wondered what it meant that she met Zach earlier this time. He’d been at Dolores’ place when she went to rent the place. She sighed. She couldn’t spend the next few days scrutinizing every difference.
Unless the changes were the key to the puzzle.
“There shouldn’t be any differences,” she said as she pulled her red Mustang into her soon to be old apartment complex.
To see her apartment complex on fire. “Oh, no.”
Fire trucks blocked her access. Where there weren’t trucks there were hoses to the various hydrants. Parking a block away, she then hiked back and searched out her work partner, Glen Gery. He was also a volunteer firefighter.
“Grace,” he said then embraced her in a Nomex hug. “You’re place is wrecked.”
“Nothing to save?”
She hadn’t brought much with her to Glen Hills, but she did have some photos that had meant something to her.
“No, sorry.”
“The cause?”
“Don’t know. I was inside and it looked set.”
She didn’t think her landlord would do it, but who knew what lurked in men’s hearts. With nowhere to go and no desire to watch the firefighters battle the fire that left her homeless, she returned to Dolores’ place.
Zach was just leaving. He paused before getting into his car as if memorizing her license plate. With no moving violations she didn’t care what he searched for. On the other hand if he read about the last place she’d lived and the murder he’d become suspicious again.
She frowned while pulling into her new home. Dolores agreed to let her move in early. Tonight.
So Grace went shopping for new clothes thankful that her uniform stayed at work. Fatigued from an activity she didn’t enjoy she stopped mid-afternoon for cup of coffee.
Settling into a plush seat by the window she realized someone was staring at her. Zach rose and moved to sit at her table.
“Hi,” she said trying to sound like she never met him.
“You’re Grace.”
She motioned for him to sit. Maybe this time she’d get to know him better. “Find anything out from my license plate.”
“You haven’t applied for your New Jersey license, yet,” he said, dropping into the seat and placing his coffee in front of him.
She smelled vanilla and cinnamon from his cup. Hers was a straight, unadulterated cup of coffee with a little artificial sweetener. Interesting that he was a cop and went for the fancy stuff. “I have some time. I haven’t decided I’m staying.”
“Oh, will you go back where you came from?”
She shrugged. She had no idea what her latest “job” would bring her or even if she’d be successful. “Doubt it.”
“Problems back there?”
Did he know already? “Why would you think that?”
He was in full cop mode, even if he wasn’t a cop anymore. Or had that changed? She didn’t see a badge on his belt so maybe not..
“Usually that’s the reason people move.”
She leaned back in her chair, her finger tracing a line around the top of her oversized coffee cup. “People move around for lots of reasons. Wanderlust. Better jobs.”
He leaned his elbows on the table his gray gaze taking in all of her. She wouldn’t have been any more vulnerable if she’d been naked.
“Do you have wanderlust?”
His voice came out low and gravelly. The sound touched a primeval part of her, saying, “This is your mate.” This was as if she’d met her other half. Oh. My. God. Should she do things differently with Zach this time?
She smiled, pushing away her scary feelings. “Yes, I think I do.”
With his head cocked, he flashed her some teeth. The gesture wasn’t actually a smile, but something more predatory. “What would make you settle?”