“Were you lusting after the guy?” Gabe actually sounded jealous.
“You can’t seriously be worried about Fabio,” I said. “Babe, believe me when I say that I’m not attracted to him.”
“Then what are you so worried about?” he wanted to know.
“He turned up in my salon to schedule an appointment with me today. Chaz said he asked for me specifically. He’s been here for less than twenty-four hours and already knew who I was. Doesn’t that sound suspicious to you?”
“Not in this town,” Gabe remarked. “All it took was him having a cup of coffee at The Brew this morning and asking for a good place to get his hair cut.”
“Cut,” I snorted. “Do you think those highlights are natural?” I asked Gabe.
“Uh, I didn’t notice his hair,” Gabe replied, a bit snidely.
“What does that mean?” I asked Gabe, feeling my ire coming on.
Gabe set his plate on the table and turned to me. I saw emotions I never wanted to see in his eyes: insecurity and dread. “What I noticed was that he only had eyes for you.” True, but it didn’t feel sexual to me. It was something far more unsettling to me, although I couldn’t quite name what it was.
“It doesn’t matter, Gabe, because he can’t have me. I belong to you.” I picked his plate up off the coffee table and handed it to him. “Eat your dinner. Skipping meals is the last thing you need to do while under this much stress.” I shook my head in disbelief that Gabe could entertain that my heart would ever belong to someone else after he held it in his hand.
“I don’t think I like him,” Gabe said.
“I know that I don’t like him, which was why I told him I didn’t drink when he tried to hand me the bottle of wine. How’d he know my favorite wine, anyway? Who the fuck in town would’ve told him that?” I asked.
“Good point since you drive into the next town to buy it.” Gabe narrowed his eyes. “It’s possible that it was a lucky guess, but I think I need to do a little digging in to our new neighbor.”
“I agree,” I said. “I can’t shake the feeling that Fabio’s brought something bad to town with him.”
“I’ll see what I can find out,” Gabe promised.
I felt guilty that he would even waste a minute of his work day looking at that guy when the internet was a hotbed of information. After we had finished eating, I pulled up my internet browser on my tablet and typed his name in the search box.
I didn’t go into the search with a lot of expectations, but what I found shocked the hell out of me. There was a wide variety of photos of the man along with articles about his psychic abilities. “I don’t believe it,” I said.
“What?” Gabe asked when he returned after stacking our plates in the dishwasher. I turned my tablet around for him to see. Gabe took it out of my hands and began clicking things. “Well, what do we have here?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t know because you took my tablet,” I reminded him.
Gabe hooked his arm around my neck and pulled until my head rested against his chest and I could see what he was reading. “The guy has been on several of those cold case shows, and a few psychic investigation shows too. This article is from last year. ‘Psychic Emory Jackson led police to a location in the woods where he claimed Tira Strebor, age twenty-two, had been buried by her killer. After authorities had recovered Ms. Strebor’s remains, Mr. Jackson was investigated and later cleared of any wrongdoing. He was out of the country at the time of Ms. Strebor’s abduction.’ Here’s an article about how they solved her abduction and murder with his help,” Gabe said.
“Do you believe in that stuff?” I asked Gabe.
“There have been plenty of documented cases where psychics have provided clues that have helped solve cases,” he told me. “I think for every legitimate psychic there are fifty more that are frauds. It’s not an impressive ratio.” Gabe thumbed through the articles written about Emory’s involvement with police investigations. Some of them included photographs of the guy on the scene with law enforcement while others were clearly posed for effect.
“I don’t think his appearance in our town is necessarily a good thing,” I told Gabe, convinced that my trepidation was warranted.
Gabe had found an article that was titled:Psychic’s Abilities Started After Death of Husband. I’d nestled in closer and listened as Gabe read the article out loud. In January 2012, Emory and his husband, River Jackson, were involved in a single-car accident after coming home from celebrating River’s birthday with some friends. They were five miles from home when River hit a patch of black ice on a bridge and lost control of his car. Emory hadn’t been wearing a seatbelt and was ejected from the car before it went over the side of the bridge and plunged into the frigid water below. Emory came out of his coma a week later and learned of his husband’s death. He said his abilities began a few months later and it felt like his late husband was working through him to help people in need.
“That’s really sad,” I said somberly. I couldn’t imagine waking up to find that Gabe was taken from me. Hell, just the thought had tears stinging the back of my eyes.
“I can’t even imagine,” Gabe added. I knew he was thinking the same thing by the way he pulled me even tighter against his side. “Damn, how does a guy get up the next day after learning something like that?”
“I guess he believes there’s something more he has left to accomplish or he wants to honor his husband’s memory,” I replied. “It sure as hell wouldn’t be easy.” That same ominous feeling I’d felt before permeated my body and left me cold, so much so that my teeth began to chatter in the warm comfort of my home. I closed my eyes and willed the fear away. Once I had myself together, I looked up at Gabe and asked, “What do you think it means that he’s in Blissville? We don’t have any unsolved cases, do we?” I asked.
Gabe appeared to be contemplating his answer as he stretched his neck by moving his head from left to right. The wrinkled forehead and frown he wore on his mouth didn’t alleviate any of the uncertainty I felt. “I guess we’ll find out when he reveals his purpose to us,” he said. “I can tell you one motherfucking thing his visions didn’t reveal, and that was you inhisbed. You’remySunshine.”
“Damn straight,” I replied.
“Not even close,” Gabe shot back, causing me to almost choke on my drink of beer.
