The Survivor. Rhonda Nelson

nodded thoughtfully. “I think he’s going to be a good addition to the team.”

      Payne did, too.

      Guy grinned. “Do you think we should have mentioned that Bess isn’t—”

      “Nah,” Jamie told him, a big grin spreading across his face. “He’ll find out soon enough.”

      Payne smiled. He most certainly would.

      2

      BESS CANTRELL OBSERVED the mutinous look on her assistant’s face and heaved an internal sigh of frustration. In addition to everything else that was going wrong, she did not need Elsie’s drama. But if she hadn’t wanted drama, she should have never kept on the spotty psychic/occasional nudist/full-time pain in the ass as her help after her grandfather died.

      “I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Elsie predicted. “You never listen to me, but you’re going to wish you did this time. I know I’m not always spot-on—”

      Bess gave a mental eye roll. “You mean like the time you told me that you saw me taking a beach vacation and the pipes burst beneath the kitchen sink?”

      “—but I’m telling you, this time—”

      Bess tidied her client list once again, then slipped it into a folder. “Or the time you told me that you saw me having a hot night of passion with the UPS man and the next day his face was on the front page of the paper for setting a warehouse ablaze?”

      Elsie’s papery cheeks flushed, but she continued on. “Be that as it may, I have a terrible, terrible feeling that you’re going to get—”

      Bess heaved a deep sigh. “Or the time you told me that I shouldn’t go to the grocery store on Lentil, to go to one on Hillengrove because you were certain that the one on Lentil was going to have some sort of trouble, and I went to Hillengrove and was held hostage for over an hour while the store was being burgled?”

      “I got those two confused!” Elsie finally exploded, her dark penciled eyebrows winging up her forehead. “My sight isn’t perfect! How many times do I have to explain that to you? But the point is I was right about something terrible happening.” She grimaced primly. “I merely got the store wrong,” she said, as if this little detail didn’t signify.

      And in Elsie’s mind, it didn’t.

      Bess looked out the storefront and continued to wait for the agent Brian Payne, one of her good clients, was sending over. She didn’t have any idea how much his services actually cost—and would have been more than willing to pay—but Brian had insisted on trading the service out. As such, she was going to be on the lookout for anything she thought he might be interested in. Over the years he’d bought everything from old lighting fixtures to antique clear gas pumps. He had eclectic taste and had been a good customer.

      When the police had failed to give her any true hope of catching the person who’d stolen her hard drive and was now in the process of harassing her clients, Brian had been the first person she’d thought of. She’d had no idea that the book in the picture had actually been a Wicked Bible and, furthermore, had had no idea that a thing like that even existed. But given that Brian had told her he knew of one that had gone for a hundred grand at auction recently, she could certainly understand the appeal.

      Elsie released a self-suffering sigh. “You aren’t going to listen to me, are you?” she said, frowning tragically. “I have this sight—this gift,” she continued with a theatrical wave toward the sky. “And you are going to go about your mulish, headstrong ways.” She harrumphed. “You are just like your grandfather. Always have been, even when you were just a wee thing.”

      “Thank you,” Bess said, even though she knew Elsie didn’t exactly mean it as a compliment. She’d loved her grandfather to utter distraction and had appreciated everything about him. She’d lost him three years ago and there wasn’t a day that went by when she didn’t miss him terribly. Her father had died in a car wreck when she was seven and her mother, racked with grief, had taken her own life a year later on the anniversary of his death. Officially orphaned then, she’d moved in with her grandfather—a widower himself—and had been with him ever since. So had Elsie, for that matter, which was no small reason why Bess didn’t let her go and hire someone more competent. But Elsie tried and, though there had never been anything romantic between the older woman and her grandfather, she’d been the closest thing to a grandmother Bess had ever had. Since she’d always collected odd things, Elsie fit in perfectly.

      Her grandfather’s house was hers now, of course, and Bess had renovated it more to her liking, but there were certain things she hadn’t been able to touch. His tobacco stand still sat next to his old leather tufted wingback chair and the small needle-point footstool was still stationed in front of it, waiting for a pair of aching feet. She grinned.

      Usually hers.

      They’d made quite a pair, she and her grandfather. Though he hadn’t told her until much, much later, she hadn’t spoken at all for the first year after her mother had committed suicide. She’d nod or shake her head and occasionally cry, but she hadn’t talked and she hadn’t smiled. Rather than send her back to school before she was ready, he’d homeschooled her instead and, though he’d tried to reintroduce her to public school later, she’d become so distraught he’d refused to make her go.

      Beyond second grade she hadn’t set foot in a classroom until she’d gone to college, and even then she would have rather been tutored by her grandfather. Frankly, her education would have been better. She’d learned the Classics at his knee, could read bits of Latin and knew more about the solar system than the general population. He’d taught her Roman and Greek mythology, had taken her to almost every major battlefield in the continental U.S. and had made history so alive for her, it was a passion she still had today.

      They’d ride the back roads of the South “picking,” as he liked to call it, and he’d drill her on various mathematical theorems and throw out famous quotes and expect her to know them, based on all the biographies he’d wanted her to read. “I cannot live in a world without books” had been one of his favorites. Thomas Jefferson, she remembered.

      Her grandfather had wanted her to have the degree in the event she ever decided to do anything besides “rescue history,” picking through old barns and houses for people’s “junk,” though she abhorred that term. Nothing was ever junk in her opinion. Everything had value and purpose.

      To the illiterate eye her place was probably a catchall for useless items, but to Bess it was a cache of things that had almost been lost. She was holding on to them for safekeeping until they could be sold and passed on to someone who would appreciate them.

      “I can see you’ve made your mind up,” Elsie continued, her nostrils flaring.

      The luggage next to the door had probably “told” her that, Bess thought, squashing a smile.

      “I have. Brian is sending someone over to keep watch on the store so you’ll be safe, and I’ll have my cell if anything comes up while I’m off with the additional agent.” She sent her a harsh look. “And by ‘comes up’ I mean a legitimate issue, not any premonitions, you understand.”

      Elsie tsked and shook her head. “Poor Nostradamus,” she said. “I have an inkling right now how he must have felt.”

      Bess smothered a snort. “Just cover the store and handle the auctions, please. Hopefully we’ll be able to take care of this relatively quickly.”

      Where was the agent anyway? The longer it took them to get on the road, the more time the asshole who was terrorizing her clients had to get ahead of them. One of the advantages she and the agent would have was that Bess knew which clients were ones she’d sold stuff to and which clients she’d bought things from. The would-be thief was drawing from a master list and had been going to see both, and he was working in a pretty direct line, moving from place to place. If he kept to this pattern, then they should be able to catch up with him.

      Initially