Sizzle and Burn

growled. “Doesn’t take a psychic to connect those dots.”
    “I’m going to need the Judson Tallentyre file.”
    Fallon went uncharacteristically silent for a couple of beats.
    “That’s a grade-four classification,” he said eventually. “Master and Council eyes only.”
    “Get it for me, Fallon.”
    There was another two-beat pause.
    “Damn,” Fallon said, thoroughly disgusted. “I knew this was going to happen.”
    “What?”
    “Five minutes into the case and you’re already giving orders. How many times do I have to remind you that I’m the boss here at J&J?”
    “I’ll try to remember that.”
    He ended the call and clipped the phone to his belt. Hoisting the duffel, he walked through the big, silent house and stopped briefly at the front door.
    He turned and looked back at the gleaming stone tile in the foyer, the warm, Tuscan-style colors on the walls and the soothing views of green vineyards and mountains.
    He’d been content in the house for most of the six years he’d lived in it. But then Jenna had arrived in his life. She moved in with him while they planned the wedding, living there just long enough to put her stamp on the place.
    It would never be home again. When the Oriana case was finished, he would sell it.

Four
    O ver the course of his years in police work, first as a cop in San Diego and even once or twice during his short tenure as chief of police in Shelbyville, Wayne Langdon had encountered his share of strange folks. None of them, however, had given him the peculiar, downright eerie sensation he was getting from the woman seated on the other side of his desk.
    None of them had ever had eyes like Raine Tallentyre, either.
    “Is the girl all right?” she asked.
    So cool and composed, he thought, as if she found the victims of serial killers every day of the week.
    He finally realized what it was about her eyes that was so unsettling. The cat that hung around the back door of the station had eyes the same gold-green color. Looked at you the same way, too. Raine wore a pair of severe, black-framed glasses but they didn’t do a damn thing to soften the impression. You got the feeling that she saw things at midnight that other people couldn’t see, didn’t want to see.
    “The ER doctor told me that, physically, she appears to be unharmed,” he said, trying not to stare at her eyes. “But she’s obviously been through an ordeal. Says her name is Stacy Anderson. A prostitute from Seattle. The kidnapper posed as a client. He brought her here sometime yesterday and put her in that storage locker. Told her she was being punished. Before he locked the door he took pictures. Used a digital camera.”
    A tiny, visible shudder went through Raine. She inclined her head once, as if he had just confirmed something she had already suspected.
    “He’s keeping a scrapbook,” she said. “Souvenirs of his successes.”
    She was in her early thirties, he decided. Tall for a woman. She didn’t try to disguise her height by wearing flat shoes, either, the way a lot of tall women did. The heels on her black boots had to be a couple of inches high. She wore her dark hair pulled back in a twist that emphasized those cat-like eyes and her cheekbones. Her black blazer looked like it had been created for a female mob boss by some high-end Italian designer. She wore it open over chocolate brown trousers and a matching brown turtleneck.
    No wedding ring, he noticed. He was not surprised. An adventurous, maybe intoxicated man might take a walk on the wild side with a woman like this but he’d have to be a fool to marry her. The lady was dangerous territory. Everyone said that her aunt had been certifiably crazy. Stuff like that sometimes went down through the bloodlines.
    At least Raine hadn’t tried to tell him that she was psychic. Not yet, at any rate. That was a relief. He hated dealing with the quacks, frauds and phonies who frequently showed up in cases like this one, claiming paranormal powers.
    “You say this is the first time you’ve been back to Shelbyville since you moved your aunt to Oriana last year?” he asked.
    “Yes. Until then my aunt used the house here in Shelbyville as a getaway.”
    He glanced down at his notes. “Evidently she liked to get away several times a year for long periods of time.”
    “She enjoyed the peace and solitude of the mountains.”
    “According to my information, you drove up here frequently to visit her when she was in residence, so