Sample Chapter For CROSSING THE LINE by Catherine Stang

It looked like a freaking movie set. Detective Connor Galbraith muttered a cuss word as he tightened his grip on the frightened little girl who clung to his neck. All around them, cameras flashed. Every local channel along with all the major cable news networks lined up just behind the barricade of squad cars. Not that he was surprised to see the press here in large numbers. It wasn’t every day the District Attorney’s daughter is kidnapped by gunmen who held the Los Angeles Police Department at bay. It was a damn interesting story. He just wished to hell little Ashley hadn’t been a witness to the bloody ending.

“It’s just about over,” he murmured into three-year-old Ashley Davenport’s smoky blonde hair. “Don’t let all the cameras scare you, princess. You’re going home.”

“Promise?”

Her voice was so soft that he could barely hear it.

He gave her a reassuring squeeze. “I promise.”

Connor cradled her close as the S.W.A.T. team ran around him to secure the rest of the building. He hoped they caught the bastard who shot his back up, Officer Harry. That suspect managed to escape during the gunfight.

An ambulance and coroner’s wagon roared up. How had things spun so far out of his control? Damn. When Connor closed his eyes, he could still see the blood darkening Harry’s shirt. Why the hell didn’t he wear his bulletproof vest? He just hoped Harry made it.

Connor hated making mistakes—especially ones of this magnitude—with the whole world watching. Killing suspects never sat easy with him. No matter how many candles he lit or priests he confessed to, killing stole pieces of his soul.

Just beyond the line of reporters stood the little girl’s mother, the usually unflappable Julia Davenport from the DA’s office. Morgan’s underlings snatched her daughter from daycare to scare Julia into getting Morgan’s case dropped. Now one of the kidnappers was dead and the other on the lam. Two more material witnesses were pulled out of a dumpster in an alley not far from here. Unless his partner, Trenton, caught the other suspect who he was chasing, Julia’s case was over. Without witnesses, the rest of the state’s case was based on flimsy circumstantial evidence. Which meant Judge Barnes would likely throw it out. Dammit to hell! Morgan would go free to peddle his drugs elsewhere. Two years of hard investigative work down the toilet.

He hardly recognized Julia in jeans and a loose T-shirt. She looked years younger and much more vulnerable. His gaze met her teary one for a brief moment as she mouthed: “thank you.” He blinked back his own tears as amid a flash of cameras, he lowered a struggling Ashley so she could run into the arms of her sobbing mother.

Connor straightened, preparing to face an onslaught of reporters moving towards him since the extra police officers had shifted them away from the mother and child reunion. With blood still pounding in his ears, he hoped he could rein in his temper long enough to deal with the press.

“Detective Galbraith, is it true that Ashley Davenport was kidnapped in an attempt to stop the Morgan Case from going forward?” a reporter from Channel 15 shouted over the crowd.

Connor grimaced as he raised his hands to silence the flow of questions. Damn. His breath caught at the sharp pain slicing through his side. They came too damn close to getting him this time.

He cleared his throat. “The department has no official comment at this time. Chief Mitchell will have a press conference at two.”

“But isn’t it true one suspect and a police officer lost their lives in the rescue operation?”

He hoped to hell Harry didn’t die.

“I can’t confirm or deny that report.” Jeez, he could hardly wait for this sound bite to be played over and over ad nauseam all day long.

“Isn’t there one suspect still at large?”

“Were the two bodies found yesterday connected to this case?”

“Sorry, boys, you’ll have to wait for the official press conference.”

A groan came up from the crowd. As the reporters talked among themselves, Connor slipped through the crowd. He had to find Simone. Relief poured over him when he saw the delicate woman perched on the edge of a flower shop windowsill part way down the block. At least she hadn’t fled, although part of him wished she would, because he had no idea what the hell to do with her.

The connection he felt to her unnerved him. She and her eccentric aunt appeared out of the blue in his women’s Tae Kwon Do class. She claimed to have no previous training, yet she followed his moves perfectly. They shadow fought as though they were of one mind. She disappeared as soon as class ended. He tried in vain to find her. Then like magic, she showed up last night at the police station claiming to know where Ashley Davenport was being held.

He didn’t believe in such things as visions, but his partner, Trent, and back-up, Harry, wouldn’t let him dismiss her so easily. With no other good leads, he let Simone ride with him as she told him where to go. It bothered him that she knew so much about the kidnapper’s plans. Now that the danger had cooled, he planned to interrogate her further.

She stood as he walked towards her, hands in the pockets of a floral dress. She had on white sandals and he tried unsuccessfully not to look at her glittery pink painted toes. Nail polish was the last thing he usually noticed, but Simone’s feet were too sexy. He had never known anyone who wore a gold toe ring and ankle bracelet—especially not someone who seemed as bookish as Simone Spencer.

Enough. He forced his gaze to meet hers.

At a little over five feet, Simone had to look up at him, since he towered over her at six-three. Her rich, burnished red hair was cut in a flattering way, which framed her oval face. She had a sultry, yet pixyish, aura that kept him guessing.

“I was right about all of it, wasn’t I?” Her soft inquiry tugged at his cold, hardened heart. In her deep blue gaze, he could read the anguish and fear. Eyes that usually reminded him of calm blue water were turbulent today.

Damn. He had to keep his feelings out of this. She was a suspect, or at best, an accomplice.

Simone closed her eyes, shuddering. “I saw death.”

“One of the kidnappers was killed. Harry from my team was seriously wounded.” He searched her gaze for shock, but saw only quiet resignation. How could she know exactly what happened?

“Do you think Harry will be okay?”

“You tell me. You’re the psychic.”

She stiffened at his gruff tone. Connor knew he had gone too far, but dammit the worry evident in her tone pissed him off. Why? He couldn’t say. Maybe it was just too dangerous to let himself care about her feelings.

“Harry wasn’t the only one that was shot,” she said softly.

He wanted to deny it, but his ribs still burned from the impact of the bullet against his bulletproof vest. She was good—too good.

She touched his arm in a comforting gesture that was anything but that. Instead, it sent shockwaves through him. As he started to step back, she wrapped her arms around his waist, pulling him tightly to her soft body.

“I often wish I saw more than fleeting images,” she murmured against his damp shirt. She felt so small and fragile pressed against his large muscular frame made more so by the extra padding of his protective vest.

“I know.” One arm tightened around her as he stroked her hair.

For a moment, they just stood there, clinging to each other while the adrenaline rush from combat coursed through him. Somehow, holding her seemed to soothe his frayed nerves. And that frightened him.

Other noises around them made Connor realize where they were. He didn’t want to draw attention to her. For some reason, she wanted to remain anonymous. He stepped away, surprised by his own reluctance to do so. He had never been a demonstrative sort of guy. Maybe it was the cop in him that never let anyone get too close.

“Detective Galbraith.” A well-known reporter pulled away from the crowd, heading toward him. He stepped in front of Simone, putting her out of their line of fire.

“Is it true you had outside help solving this kidnapping?” The pert blonde he recognized from a cable network stared expectantly at him.

“We used all the resources at our disposal.” There. Make what you will of that remark. As he knew they would when their experts analyzed every comment.

“Then it is true about using an untried psychic?”

So, she had done her homework. He flashed his trademark grin. “You know I never reveal my sources. They would stop coming to me if I did.”

“Then she is a source?”

“There are many bits of information gathered in a complex case like this. No one person or tidbit holds the whole key. They are just part of the bigger puzzle.”

He wondered how she could continue to smile while wanting to throttle him at the same time.

A large hairy man in a Grateful Dead shirt grabbed the reporter’s arm. “Julia Davenport is granting an interview and you’re the one she is asking for.”

Her polite smile faded. “We’ll talk later.”

Like hell we will. “Anytime.”

“Simone.” He turned. Dammit, she evaporated like mist. What his elusive psychic didn’t know was that he had her followed. He’d get an address from the plain-clothes officer who tailed her last night. And they would talk. That was one prediction he could count on. He wondered if she knew it, too.

* * * *

She was home. Simone never thought she’d call the Written in Stars strip mall she co-owned with her twin great-aunts and grandmother home. Who would have thought the youngest math professor at Yale would give it all up to sell bath salts.

She sighed, unlocking the glass door to her shop. The comforting smell of lavender, rosemary, and the lingering scent of lemon candles soothed her. Sunlight sparkled through the windows, twinkling off her cut-glass shelves, giving the tiny shop a magical glow.

On three sides, there were beaded doors that connected her shop with Celeste’s Secrets, Urania’s Answers, and Phoenix’s Metaphysical Bookshop.

Her great-grandfather had been an astronomer. His love of the heavens prompted him to give his three daughters all stars’ names. Thank goodness the tradition ended with her mom getting tired of being teased about being Astraea.

Not getting a star name wasn’t the only family tradition her mother wanted to distance herself from. With Great Grandma being a gypsy came the gift of sight, which her mother turned her back on, too. She even went so far as to forbid Simone to use her gift. That order only heightened her interest in Grandma Celeste and the aunts. Blocking out her visions made Simone feel incomplete. Opening up to them was overwhelming. That’s what brought her to California to find herself. Now, she began to wonder if she had made a mistake.

Light filtered through the purple beads of Celeste’s Secrets. The other two shops were dark. It was close to noon and she wondered why the aunts hadn’t opened up yet. But then they always kept their own odd hours. It surprised her that their customers never complained. They just accepted it as part of the Kelly sisters’ eccentricity.

Needing conversation, Simone slipped through the beads into a shop filled with good luck charms, bubbling fountains, and incense.

Sandalwood incense and the sound of music mixed with rushing water filled the air.

A classy older woman with silver hair done up in an elegant knot sat behind the cash register reading a newly released hard cover mystery.

“I saw your police detective all over the news stations this morning,” Celeste Kelly said without looking up from her book.

Simone swallowed hard. Drat. Grandma Celeste was far too perceptive. “He is not my police detective.”

Celeste arched a silver brow. “So you keep telling me, darling. Sounds like things didn’t go well, did they? They just said that policemen died. Another one was injured chasing a suspect he lost.”

Simone covered her mouth with a trembling hand, thinking of adorable, teasing Harry, who talked Connor into listening to her. Connor had a closed mind when it came to psychic ability, but Harry had an interest in unexplainable things. He admitted to visiting her aunts’ shops. How could Harry be gone? She hoped Connor’s partner, Trenton Phillips, wasn’t hurt too badly.

“Now you see what can happen when you make rash judgments.”

“I know what I saw, and I acted.”

“You sent him in too soon and now an innocent life was lost. With one suspect dead and the other on the run, Detective Galbraith’s investigation is in trouble. You should have stayed out of it.”

She stiffened. “I had to protect the little girl.” Simone hated the defensive edge to her voice.

“You were forcing the outcome.” Celeste slammed her book shut. “Admit it, missy.”

“I couldn’t let Ashley die.”

“Did you see her death?”

“No, but the possibility was very strong.”

Celeste raised a finger. “Ah, but not a foregone conclusion. Interpreting your visions is dangerous. You don’t have enough experience with them yet.”

What could she say? Her parents never let her admit she had visions, let alone interpret them. After a while, she kept her bizarre ability to herself so no one would think she was crazy. Only a chance meeting with her aunts gave her the freedom to explore that side of herself. Much to her parents’ dismay, she quit her job as a math professor at Yale and moved out to California.

Without responding, she changed the CD to an upbeat one that inspired sunlight and sunrises.

“You can’t always protect Connor.” Celeste began lighting the green soothing candles she always lit when a potential argument loomed in the air.

Watching Grandma Celeste perform this anger ritual used to stop Simone from voicing her opinion, but not anymore. Not since she had taken that assertiveness workshop last month. “Maybe not, but what is wrong with warning him once in a while?”

Grandma Celeste came closer, cupping Simone’s chin in her long, elegant fingers, forcing their eyes to meet. “You’ve touched him again, haven’t you?”

Simone swallowed hard. “We hugged after he saved Ashley.”

“I was afraid of this.” She clicked her tongue. “I knew if you ever shared what you saw with Detective Galbraith, that you’d be lost. You’re merely a channel. The things you see are not signs for you to act.”

“Then what good are they if I can’t help someone?” Simone waved her hands in frustration. “Why allow them into my conscious thought if I’m not going to act?” She sighed. “I saw Ashley in that building. It was me,” she thumped her chest, “not the police who found her.”

“Ah, but you did more than give him the location, didn’t you?”

Simone played with the large, smooth quartz crystal. How dare Grandma Celeste question her? She did what was right, didn’t she?

“You are suggesting that I should have let her die.”

“You don’t know that was the ultimate outcome. This was bigger than she was. There is a rippling effect when we try to control things.”

“Ever the authority.” Aunt Phoenix Rose floated into the room. The woman looked like a modern day gypsy with flowing dark hair, dangling hoop earrings, and a long dark dress.

“That’s just what she needs, advice from you, Phoenix Rose—queen of the parlor tricks.”

Phoenix lit an incense stick from the soothing candle and waved it around. “The bad vibes are stifling.” She swished it in front of her sister Celeste’s face. “Trying to drown me in your negativity. Just because you’ve lost your powers is no reason to begrudge me the right use of mine.”

“I haven’t lost mine, Phoenix.” Celeste coughed, brushing the smoke away from her face. “I just refuse to profit from them.”

“I don’t profit.” Phoenix placed a dramatic hand over her heart. “I give comfort to those who are hurting. Can I help it if my clients are grateful for helping them to heal their unsolved feelings with the dearly departed? May I remind you that their donations allowed us to buy the entire strip mall. Now we can each have our own shop. My occult books don’t corrupt your feel-good ones anymore.”

Celeste frowned, shaking her head. “You dabble in things you don’t fully understand.”
“This is the same song, what verse now, Simone? I lose track.” Aunt Urania, Aunt Phoenix’s twin, slipped through the beads carrying a bag of oriental take-out. Her many bracelets tinkled with each movement.

Simone giggled. Mercy, how she loved these three and their teasing banter. Despite their sometimes-heated debates, the love between them was obvious. “I’d say a millionth, Aunt Urania.”

Aunt Urania waved her bag. “Can we have one lunch without debating good versus evil? I think it’s Phoenix’s turn to have us eat in her channeling room.”

Grandma Celeste choked. “With all the gothic stuff. I think I’ll stay at my cash register and eat out of the box. Something about those black lights and gargoyles takes away my appetite.”

Aunt Urania groaned. “I suppose we can use my reading room. I hate to because it distracts my patrons from their tarot reading if the room smells like sweet and sour pork. We’ll have to eat fast—I have a client at one.”

“Is that before or after the tabloids come?” Phoenix flopped down on a high-backed wooden chair, lighting her cigarette.

Urania dropped the bag. Muttering, she plucked the cigarette from Phoenix’s hand and crushed it in a pink incense burner. “Disrupt your own spirits, Phoenix Rose. I need this place free of earthly residue. Besides, laugh if you will. All my predictions have come true. I’d like to see Jeanne Dixon top that.”

Simone reached for a box of rice. “Are you really going on Oprah next week?”

“I’m still debating that. Enough about me. I want to know if Simone followed my advice and shared her visions with that hunky police detective from our self defense class.” She wiggled her blonde brows. “He could protect me any day.”

Such scandalous comments from a lady who talked and looked like Glinda the Good Witch from the Wizard of OZ. Drat. Her nerves were too raw to discuss Connor.

Celeste took the rice box from Phoenix. “I might have known you had advised her, Urania. You’re such a hopeless romantic. Simone not only told him but attempted to affect the outcome.”

Silence loomed in the room. Heat crept into Simone’s face as she felt them all staring at her. “I did what I thought was best. I saw death.”

Urania reached across the table and patted Simone’s hand with her ring-covered one. “That is frightening the first time you see those dark images. But even I know you can’t stop those events. Life has to take its natural course.”

Not if I can help it. Isn’t that the point of having the gift of sight?

Phoenix leaned back in her chair. “You interpreted what you saw, didn’t you? That is very dangerous. The only thing I agree with Celeste on is that we are merely channels. We tell our visions, but the people have to do their own interpretation. Only they have the right to alter their destiny.”

Was Ashley supposed to die? That thought made Simone’s stomach knot.

“Coming from you I’m not sure I’m flattered.” Celeste placed the box of Broccoli Beef on the round, glass top table. “You tell people things they were never intended to know.”

“No.” Phoenix waved a dismissal. “I allow them to put their confusion to rest.”

“But don’t you have to interpret what the spirits say?” Simone asked, trying to turn the heat of the conversation away from her.

“No, I just let them speak. Their families know what they mean.”

“I see.” Simone frowned. But she didn’t see.

“No, she doesn’t see.” Celeste shook her head. “Simone is just discovering her visions. What she sees is untrained and unreliable. Can’t you think back to your early days? Need I remind you of some of your mistakes?”

“Heavens, don’t bring those up.” Phoenix shivered. “You’re right, though. I’ve pushed those experiences out of my mind. If I didn’t, it would drain my confidence and keep me unable to focus.”

Phoenix turned to Simone. “I hate to admit it, but Celeste has a valid point. You need patience and training before you can share your gift with the world.”

“Then what do I do in the meantime?” This is all so confusing. “How do I gain experience if I’m not allowed to try? Shoot, I might as well be teaching math at Yale.”

“You need to try here in a controlled environment on a limited basis with people who truly believe,” Phoenix said.

“That’s what I was attempting to do the day this whole mess started. Remember, Aunt Phoenix, you let me sit in on your reading with Claire Jamison. Explain to me how you could sit there with knowledge that might ease her suffering and not impart it?”

“I told her all I could. Anymore would only add to her pain.”

“So you let her leave like that.”

“Oh, sweetie.” Urania patted her hand, casting Phoenix a scathing glare. “You touched Mrs. Jamison right after her session, didn’t you?”

Simone flew to her feet. “I saw her crying in the parking lot and I went out to comfort her.”

Phoenix released a sharp breath. “You shouldn’t have interfered. It was too soon. Of course she was upset. The poor dear lost her only son and his wife in a very violent way. I let her talk to them so she knows what really happened. That’s all I’m allowed to do.”

“Why can’t she know all of it?”

“It isn’t meant to be.”

“Says who—you?”

“How dare you imply that I would be less than ethical! You don’t even realize what your meddling has done.”

“Now, Phoenix.” Aunt Urania rose.

“Don’t ‘now Phoenix’ me.” She turned to Simone. “You used my open portal to see into her past and predict the future, didn’t you?’

“I couldn’t help it. From the moment I laid my hand on Mrs. Jamison’s arm, the images overwhelmed me.”

“It isn’t what you saw that created the problem, but what you did with the information.”

Simone frowned. Why was it wrong to help? “I wanted to tell her that her grandson—”

Phoenix clamped a hand over Simone’s mouth. “Don’t say it. Don’t even think it.”

Simone closed her eyes as Aunt Phoenix removed her hand. “Don’t worry. I didn’t. I couldn’t find the right words. I just told her that someday her fondest wish would be granted.”

Urania’s eyes widened. “Oh, deary me. I had no idea. If I did, I never would have advised you to make contact with Connor last night. That explains your reaction to Detective Galbraith on our first night of Tae Kwon Do class.”

Aunt Urania raised her hand to warn off Simone’s comments. “Don’t bother denying it. I saw the look on your face when he took your arm to show you how to block his strike. He thought he hurt you, but it wasn’t that at all.”

“No,” Simone whispered. “We were instantly connected. I could read his thoughts. That is why we shadow fought so well together. I knew where he would strike before he made a move. It was both exhilaratingly and frightening.”

Celeste threw down her napkin. “This is worse than I feared. You altered his destiny by crossing the line. By touching them both on the day of her reading you’ve opened that portal to the other world. Now, there is no closing it.”

“It wasn’t intentional.” Simone’s stomach tightened. “I enrolled in Connor’s class long before I met Mrs. Jamison. I never met either of them before that day.”

Phoenix fumbled through her purse for a cigarette. “Your intentions are not the issue here. By touching Galbraith and Claire Jamison, you’ve opened the door to knowledge that he was never intended to have. Sometimes the spirits give me information that should stay buried with them. I have to stay emotionally unattached so that I don’t pass this on to my clients.”

“But how do you know what should be passed on?” Simone threw up her hands in frustration.

“I just know.”

Celeste shot Phoenix a withering look. “Years of practice has helped. Admit it. Sometimes you’re wrong. Would you like me to remind you of some of those clients? Admit to Simone that there is nothing exact about reading visions. It takes training and focus to do it.”

After opening and closing her mouth, Phoenix dropped down in the chair without another word.

“I don’t understand why this is happening,” Simone said.

Urania started to speak, but Celeste quieted her with a stern look. “When did you begin having visions of Detective Galbraith?”

“Right away. He appeared as a cloudy figure in my thoughts a few minutes after I failed to talk to Mrs. Jamison. Then that night after Tae Kwon Do class, I continued to see him in my thoughts and he has been there ever since.”

“Do you feel his emotions even when you are apart and sense when he needs you?” Urania scooted close to her.

Simone nodded slowly. “It is the strangest thing. Suddenly I knew all about this case. I saw him pacing the floor worrying. I watched him stop off at church to light a candle for Ashley. That really got to me. Later that night, I heard Ashley calling me. I thought if I helped him, that would be it. That he’d vanish from my thoughts.”

“Has he?” Urania prodded.

“Yes.”

“Then maybe the connection has broken on its own.” Phoenix shrugged.

“I doubt that, but we can only hope,” Celeste said. She took the other seat beside Simone and held her hand. “My dear, even if Connor comes back into your thoughts, you must understand that you can’t fix whatever problems arise from this unfortunate situation. You must refrain from meddling further.”

Why couldn’t this be easy? “Then what can I do?”

“Stay away from him,” they all said in unison.

“But what if I can’t?”

“You must,” Urania said.

“Or else.” Phoenix waved a finger.

“Or else what?”

They all looked at each other for a long moment before Phoenix spoke.

“It could be dangerous for both of you.”