Page 71 of Dare to Love Again

Chapter 16

TWO SHOTS RANG OUT. The first embedded in the wall behind them. The second with a soft thud and an exclamation of pain.

In front of her, protecting her body with his own, Andrew lurched forward and sank to the floor. On her knees beside him, when she rolled him onto his back, she saw blood gushing up through his fingers, clutching his throat. His blue eyes met hers, dazed with shock and pain.

Her screams for help mingled with her cries to him. “Stay with me. Please, don’t go.”

Sirens sounded in the distance.

“Help is on its way. Hang on a little longer. Please, master, for me,” she whispered as she pressed her hands to the burbling hole in his flesh, but the blood—so much of it—welled between her fingers. His hand encircled her wrist, and he squeezed, though with fading strength, and only for a moment. Then it went slack and dropped limply onto his chest.

“Andrew!” she wailed as the light went out of his eyes. But as they stared vacantly back at her, they weren’t the light blue they always were but a deep familiar green.

Again, she screamed her anguish, but oddly, her shrill shrieks were mixed with the startled high-pitched yowl of a cat.

Esme shot up in bed, shaking from the skewed-yet-vivid dream, her pajamas wringing wet with sweat.

The dreams had been frequent, almost nightly in the first year. Prescription drugs had helped decrease them thereafter, but they’d never entirely stopped. Now, stressful events triggered them, like Latrice’s revelations about Finn, and the vision that followed.

But today, they had changed. Before, they’d always been an exact replay of the shooting with her waking just as Andrew faded away. It hadn’t ever altered or included anyone else.

Esme stumbled weakly to the bathroom. She stripped and stepped into the shower, turning the water on full blast, not waiting for it to warm, and not caring if it was ice cold. Turning her back to the wall, she wrapped her arms around her trembling body as she slid down the tile to the floor. As the water went from frigid to lukewarm, to steamy, the spray heated her skin and the shaking finally stopped.

A horrible thought occurred to her then.

What if it hadn’t been a dream but a premonition?

***

SHE DIDN’T GO BACKto sleep, too afraid to. With the rest of the weekend yawning in front of her, she decided to go to work. Alone in the quiet office, she could catch up on what had piled up all week while she’d been distracted by Finn.

“There’ll be no more of that,” she told herself firmly, as she headed upstairs to get dressed.

By the time she grabbed her purse and keys and was ready to head out, it felt like late afternoon rather than eight thirty, which is what happened when you stayed up all night. She eyed the instant coffee she kept on hand for Pax but couldn’t bring herself to drink it. Instead, she retrieved her usual twenty-ounce diet Dew from the fridge.

Twenty minutes later, and still feeling sluggish, she turned into a drive-thru for another vat of caffeine to go.

Needless to say, by the time she unlocked her door and set down her keys and purse, she was wired. She also had to pee, really bad.

In the ladies’ room, once she’d attended to urgent matters, she stood in front of the mirror trying to do something with the atrocious bun she’d configured—messy didn’t begin to describe it. While she could smooth it into something half decent, there was no help for the circles under her eyes. If any of her colleagues had seen her looking like death warmed over, they would have held up a cross to ward off her bad energy. Okay, that would have been Jasmine, but the others would have kept their distance and urged her to go home and rest, and since she worked with a bunch of germaphobes, insisting she stay home until she was better.

But resting might lead to sleeping, which meant dreaming. She couldn’t handle that, not now, maybe never. In fact, she might never sleep again.

At her desk, she took a sip of bottled water then dug through her purse for Val’s card. She dialed the number, hoping to get her machine, leave a brief message about her need to cancel then work nonstop as she compartmentalized like she always did.

Damn her luck. Instead of an automated message, Val answered on the first ring.

“Valerie Thornton.”

Her eyes shot to the clock. Eight-fifty a.m. What were the odds she had a private practice, a new husband who kept late hours, and she’d be available early on a weekend morning to answer her own calls?

“Um, Val, it’s—”

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