turned away. Her shoulders gave a suspicious heave, and she sniffed loudly. Oh, no. Not more female tears. He had no defense against them. They scared him to death. Frantic to distract her from launching into full-blown waterworks, he asked quickly, “You said she died suddenly?”
His question did the trick. Lissa turned back to face him, another one of those delicate frowns of hers puckering her creamy brow. “She called me. Told me she was going to die any minute and that she’d willed everything she owned to me.”
“Was she sick a long time?”
“Oh, no. She was in perfect health. We all thought she was going to outlive the rest of the family.”
His internal antenna wiggled abruptly. Could it be? Had the mob or one of its enemies killed her? “What were the circumstances of her death, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“She died in her sleep, supposedly. A customer found her after she didn’t come downstairs for an appointment to do a reading.”
“A reading?”
“She was a psychic. I think that customer had asked for a crystal ball scrying. She also read palms very well. The last time I talked to her, she claimed she’d had a vision. That a spirit told her she was going to die within a day or two and to put her affairs in order.”
A spirit, huh? More like a mob informant, perhaps? “Who were your aunt’s clients? Did she keep a list of them?”
“I suppose so. I haven’t found it if she did keep one, though. Her business papers are, well, a little disorganized.”
If the shop downstairs was any indication of how the woman had done business, any kind of organized client list was probably a long shot. With a list, though, he could maybe identify Callista’s mob contact and find the next level of hierarchy in the secretive Russian gang he’d spent the past two years infiltrating.
“Are you hungry?” Lissa asked, startling him out of his train of thought.
“You don’t have to feed me. I’ll grab something on the way home.”
“It’s the least I can do for you after you saved my life.”
“I wouldn’t go that far in describing what I did. I only interrupted a mugging. Any passerby could have done the same.”
“They could have, but that doesn’t mean they would have. He was going to kill me.”
How did she know that? Was she a psychic, too?
“I was just planning to heat up some leftovers. Let me fix you a plate.”
“Can I help, umm, prepare it?” He eyed the hot plate and metal washtub askance.
“Nah. I bought a Monte Cristo sandwich earlier and I’ll just pop it in the microwave. It’s a lot more than I can eat alone. I’ll split it with you.”
“Sure. If you’ll let me buy the next meal.” The words were out of his mouth before he stopped to think about them. There couldn’t be a “next meal” for the two of them. She was an innocent, not mixed up in her aunt’s mess and of no use to him. He would deliver her to Bastien in the morning, and then he would get the hell out of her life and never look back.
Lissa’s hands still shook a little as she handed a paper plate with the batter-dipped, multilayered, fried ham-and-cheese sandwich to “Max Smith.” Which totally wasn’t his name. It didn’t take special powers to hear the evasion in his voice when he’d given her the name.
She was more rattled by tonight’s attack than she wanted to let on, even to herself. Thank God this stranger had been there to swoop in and save the day. She didn’t want to think about what would have happened had he not come along.
Speaking of which...“I’ll be right back,” she blurted. “There’s something I have to do.”
Max looked up at her in alarm. “You’re not leaving, are you?”
“Heavens no.” She ducked into what would have been the spare bedroom had her aunt not gutted it and dug around in her big trunk of art supplies for a sketch pad, pastels and her set of drawing pencils. Tucking that under her arm, she scooped up her easel and wrestled it out into the main room.
Max leaped to his feet to rescue the easel from her. “Where do you want this?”
“Over by the lamp. I’ll need the light.”
“Drawing something, are you?”
Crap. She couldn’t admit she wanted to capture the face she’d seen in her attacker’s mind as he’d attacked her. “It’s, umm, therapy. Helps me calm down when I’m upset.”
“You’re an artist, then?”
She shrugged. “Not really. I’m just a dabbler.”
She pulled a stool over in front of the easel he set up for her. In a few minutes a face started to take shape. She turned out to be a pretty girl, not unlike herself in features and overall coloring. Which was frankly creepy. Was her attacker a serial killer, maybe?
Once she’d captured the girl’s initial bone structure, she pulled out the pastels and really brought the face to life, drawing quickly and surely from memory.
“Who’s that?” Max eventually murmured from directly behind her.
She jumped, startled. She’d been concentrating so hard on the picture that she’d forgotten he was there.
“I have no idea.”
“It’s just a random sketch?”
There was no way she could explain it without sounding like a crazy woman, so she didn’t even try. Instead she lied. “Yes, it’s just a face.” And if she were a normal person, that was all it would be. Right, then. She’d determined to be normal; therefore, this was just a face.
Except why did the girl’s eyes stare out at her from the paper beseechingly, following her as she shifted right and left, checking the sketch’s perspective and making tiny corrections to the features?
It. Was. Just. A. Face.
Max moved in close behind her to study the sketch. “She’s pretty. You have a good hand for portraiture. You’re sure you’ve never seen this person before?”
Rather than answer his question, Lissa leaned forward to release the sheet of paper from the easel’s clips. “Here. Lay this on the floor in the corner and spray it with the fixative in the can over on the end of my work table while I put my art supplies away.”
It physically hurt Lissa to deny the girl’s fear and pain coming off that sketch. She had to get away for a minute and catch her breath. You poor, poor thing. Lissa jammed her pastels and pencils in a drawer in her dresser and slammed it shut. She wasn’t a psychic anymore. She didn’t listen to dead people anymore, and she didn’t draw the faces of murderer’s victims anymore. She
