Raef handed her a paper towel. “Just breathe.”
She took the paper towel with a hand that trembled and wiped her mouth. Raef went to the fridge and grabbed a can of Sprite, popped the top and held it out for her. “This’ll help. Rinse your mouth and then sip it.”
Lauren didn’t take the can. She just stood at the sink, wiping her mouth over and over again, staring blankly out the kitchen window to Raef’s backyard.
“Lauren?”
She didn’t even blink. He jerked the paper towel from her hands, threw it into the sink and then took her shoulders into his hands, turning her to face him.
“All right. That’s enough. Come back now.”
She stared straight ahead at his collarbone. He hadn’t realized until then how short she was—petite, really. And those sharp blue-gray eyes of hers were still vacant and glazed. Raef gave her shoulders a shake. Not too rough, but hard enough it should bring her attention back to her body. He deepened his voice and took all the emotion out of it. “I said that’s enough. Get back here, Lauren!”
Like throwing a switch, the light came into her eyes. Lauren blinked and looked up at him. “Raef? What—” Her whole body started to tremble and, feeling totally in over his head, he did the only thing he could think to do—he pulled her into a hug.
She buried her head in his chest and shook.
“Hey, it’s okay. You’re back. You’re fine,” he said inanely, thinking how small she was—God, would she even weigh a hundred pounds soaking wet?
“It’s getting worse,” she said against his chest.
“Where were you? Where do you go when that happens?” he asked.
She stepped back out of his arms and looked at him in surprise. “Ohmygod, Raef! I never even thought about where I go, just how I feel.” She shook her head and went back to the breakfast table, pushed aside her half-eaten plate and sat heavily. Lauren wrapped her hands around her mug of coffee and took a sip. Raef righted his chair and did the same.
“So, describe it to me,” he said.
She looked over her mug at him. “It’s foggy there. And cold. Ugh, and it’s wet, too.”
“Wet? It’s raining?”
Lauren shook her head. “I don’t think so. Maybe it’s not really wet, but that place makes me feel like I’m drowning,” she said.
“Could be part of the spiritual draining. That must be how your body and mind are interpreting it.”
“It’s so hard to tell you anything for sure because everything is in black and white, but foggy or blurred, like one of those old silent movies.” Her eyes narrowed contemplatively. “Actually, it’s a lot like a silent movie. Things skip around, like movie frames freezing.”
“Is anyone else there?”
“Yes,” she said without hesitation, and then added more slowly, “Aubrey is there, and there are other people, too. But they’re hard to see. They fade in and out. They’re only vague images. I do know they’re in pain. They’re all in pain.” She shook her head again. “I’ve known it all along and just refused to think about it because it’s so, so terrible there. But it has to be where the murderer is keeping his victims’ souls.”
“The Land of the Dead,” Raef said.
“What?”
He snagged the slim book from where Lauren had left it on the kitchen counter. “It’s in here. It’s also what Aubrey’s talking about when she gets ripped back there by him.”
“Bread crumbs. She’s trying to lead us to her with bread crumbs, but they keep getting eaten,” Lauren said.
“Maybe not totally eaten.” He got up, refilled their coffee and brought a legal pad and a pencil back to the table. “So, whenever Aubrey’s emotions change—whenever she tries to talk about her death or her killer—he can sense it and he rips her away from here. Correct?”
“Correct. But it happens so fast that she never really gets to tell us anything.”
“But she tries,” Raef said. “Maybe we should listen better.”
“Okay, well, I’m not going to be very good at that because I feel her pain and I get ripped away with her. Or at least part of me does—that part that’s attached to Aub.”
“I get that. So let me help, or at least help with what I’ve witnessed. The first time Aubrey disappeared was in my office when you hired me and I asked her to tell me about her murder.”
Lauren nodded. “I hired you because she told me to, and that took her a while because she kept getting ripped away. She finally just described you and then said ‘KooKoo Kitty.’ I figured it out from there.”
“KooKoo Kitty? How the hell did you find me from that?”
Lauren smiled. “It’s twin speak. We had a cat when we were twelve. Someone had dumped her on our grandparents’ ranch by one of our guest cabins. She was, of course, pregnant. She was a sweet, friendly little thing, so Mother let us keep her as one of the barn cats, but said we’d have to give away the kittens and get her spayed. We called her Cabin Kitty. Well, she had her kittens and then promptly lost her mind protecting them. She attacked every cat, dog, chicken and even horse at the ranch. We renamed her KooKoo Kitty.”
“Nice story. Still don’t know why the hell that led you to me.”
“Oh, that’s easy. After Moonrise and the whole Psy thing is seriously cuckoo, and you’re the only tall, dark and handsome working there.”
“Thank you. I think.” Then he tried not to dwell on the fact that Aubrey described him as handsome. “So, that was time number one.”
“Obviously the murderer doesn’t want you involved in his case.”
“Yeah, well, too late. Second time was at Swan Lake.” Raef thought back, frowning. “I don’t remember her saying anything even vaguely pertaining to her death, do you?”
“Actually, I do remember what she was saying because it seemed harmless.” She moved her shoulders. “Sometimes I can tell she’s getting ready to get ripped back. I mean, I know that she’s trying to tell me something.”
“Like today.”
“Exactly. But yesterday she was totally happy. All she was doing was talking about the trees. She called them soldiers, wise and strong, and said they must need a lot of care. And that was it. He took her away.”
Raef’s eyes widened. “I’m an idiot. She wasn’t talking about trees—at least, not just about them. She had to have been giving us a clue about the murderer for him to have jerked her away.” He sat up straighter. “Ah, shit. She did it again today. She said when I stop looking at the forest and find the tree I’ll get a piece of the puzzle.”
“Raef! Whoever killed her must have been working on the trees at Swan Lake,” Lauren said.
