The P.I.. Cara Summers

I tell you,” the skinny man said. “Don’t give her a hard time. Just tell her where you picked her up.”

      Her taxi driver let out a disgusted sigh. “You flagged me down on Bellevue.”

      “And where did I ask you to take me?”

      His frown deepened, but he reached in through the passenger window and extracted a clipboard. “503 Lathrop. It’s just two blocks down on the right-hand side. We were almost there when this idiot ran the light.”

      “Did not,” the skinny man muttered.

      Ignoring him, her driver handed her a business card. “You gave me this when you got in the car.”

      She glanced down and read the neatly printed name. Kristophe Angelis, Private Investigations. Beneath that in smaller font was an address—503 Lathrop. She read the phone number, too. Nothing on the card rang a bell. As far as she knew, she’d never seen the name before.

      The sound of sirens in the distance had the two men turning away from the window, and she was grateful for their distraction. She had to think, to take stock of her situation.

      She hadn’t called the taxi; she’d flagged it down. And she had a wedding dress. There were bloodstains on her suit. And she’d given the taxi driver the business card of a private investigator. The knot in her stomach tightened. No matter how you tried to add it up, it wasn’t good.

      Maybe she wasn’t on the way to her wedding. She could be a runaway bride. That seemed a more plausible explanation for why she was alone in a taxi with her wedding dress. She’d had a case of bridal jitters.

      But why was she running to a P.I.? Her gaze dropped to her suit again. A runaway bride with blood on her suit? That was not good. Her fingers tightened on the business card. Maybe this Kristophe Angelis would know who she was.

      The sirens grew louder.

      “It’s the ambulance,” the skinny man said.

      “Naw,” her taxi driver corrected. “It’s the police. They’ll interview a few witnesses and find out you ran that red light.”

      “I had the green.”

      “ I had the green. My fare will tell the police that—as soon as she comes out of shock.”

       Police. The word sent a chill through her, and she dropped her gaze once more to the bloodstains on her skirt. They’d want to know how the blood got there. How could she explain that to the police when she couldn’t remember?

      Maybe she didn’t want to remember.

      But she had to. Moving to the edge of the seat, she peered down at the floor of the taxi. She did have a purse, didn’t she? She’d glimpsed black leather when she’d moved the dress bag. Relief streamed through her. Surely, there’d be answers in there. It was heavy and it took some effort to drag it onto her lap. Opening it, she peered at the contents.

      She hadn’t thought the knot in her stomach could twist any tighter, but she’d been wrong. Even in the dim light, she could recognize the gleam of metal and make out the shape of a gun. Beneath it lay bundles of bills. The ones she could see on top were twenties.

      It was a lot of money. Doing her best to avoid touching the gun, she slipped her hand into the tote, sliding it down the sides of the stacked bills and trying to locate a wallet or anything else that might tell her who she was. But she came up empty.

      “You remember anything yet?”

      She started, clutching the tote closed before turning to see her taxi driver peering in the window. “No. Sorry.”

      “Shit,” he muttered as he turned and walked away.

      She could see beyond him to where two uniformed officers were talking to the tall, skinny man. A small crowd had gathered on the sidewalk. Even as she watched, one of the policemen pulled a notebook out of his pocket and started to talk to the bystanders.

      This was her chance, she thought. If she stayed here, she was going to have to explain the blood, the gun, the wedding dress and the small fortune in money in a tote bag. And she couldn’t. She slipped one twenty out of a bundle and set it on the seat. The money might not be hers, but she didn’t want to leave the taxi driver without his fare. Then keeping her eye on the two policemen, she very carefully opened the door that hadn’t suffered damage from the accident. She gathered up the tote and the wedding dress and slipped away into the crowd.

       2

      S ETTLING HIMSELF at his desk, Kit Angelis opened his laptop and tried to ignore the tingling sensation at the back of his neck that always warned him something was about to happen. According to his aunt Cass, the sensation was a sign of Kit’s innate psychic ability, a gift of premonition that Aunt Cass believed could be traced all the way back to ancient Greece. While the idea appealed to his imagination, Kit wasn’t all that comfortable with the notion that he might be able to “see” into the future. He’d always preferred to take life as it came at him. It was challenging enough to deal with problems as they arose without having to handle the ones that were headed at him from the future.

      Still, he took a moment to rub the back of his neck. The intensity of the tingling and the way that it had been building all day warned him that some significant event was looming on the horizon. In his opinion, these little premonitions didn’t prove he was psychic. After all, no one had labeled his friend, Roman, a “seer” when he’d claimed he had a “feeling” that something was going to happen the night he’d crashed his father’s car after Kit had talked his reluctant friend into taking it for a joyride.

      Of course, his aunt’s counterargument to that would be that Roman wasn’t Greek. And Kit Angelis was—certainly enough to know that something was definitely coming tonight.

      No matter that it was the last thing he needed. He already had plans for the weekend. He was going fishing with his brothers.

      For one tempting moment, he considered turning off his computer and hightailing it out of town. But the escape attempt would be futile. Fate had a way of dogging a person’s footsteps. How often had Aunt Cass read the story of Oedipus Rex to him as a child? If good old King Oed hadn’t been able to escape what the Fates had in store for him, how in the world did Kit Angelis hope to do it?

      With a sigh, Kit pressed the button that would boot up his computer. When his dog Ari echoed his sigh, he glanced over to where the large black animal was stretched out below the window. The dog gave him a patient, longsuffering look.

      “Working on it,” he said as he reached into his bottom drawer and fished out a biscuit. “Twenty pages and then we’re out of here.” That was his goal—to get down the second chapter of his new novel. Then they’d leave. “I promise.”

      Ari made a sound in his throat. The tone sounded skeptical.

      Kit aimed the biscuit for a spot right between the dog’s paws and hit his mark. Ari would move for food, but not much else when the temperature was this humid, and Kit hadn’t the heart to make the dog run for a treat.

      Then he turned his attention back to the computer. He’d set his goal and he was going to accomplish it. True, this was not the way he’d envisioned spending a Friday evening—especially not one that was kicking off a long holiday weekend that he still intended to spend fishing with his brothers.

      It wasn’t merely psychic senses that ran strong in the Angelis family; he and his brothers had also inherited an affinity for the sea. His grandfather on his father’s side had been a fisherman in Greece. His grandfather and great grandfather on his mother’s side had been shipbuilders near Sausalito.

      His oldest brother, Nik, especially loved the challenge of pitting himself against the elements, and so he’d be taking out his sailboat at some point this weekend. Theo would probably take the boat out, too, and he would definitely sit on the dock and throw his line in, but Kit sensed that Theo only participated in either activity because he just loved to be near water.

      But