Dead by Midnight - Beverly Barton [143]
She shouldn’t be thinking in terms of having to choose sides or considering the possibility that Nic and Griff might be at odds over whatever top-secret information Griff was going to reveal. But when she glanced at Nic and sensed some odd vibes coming from her friend, she realized her instincts were probably right on the money. Yvette Meng’s presence here tonight, along with her unnervingly spooky fellow psychic, Meredith Sinclair, bothered Nic a lot more than she wanted her husband to know.
As soon as Derek and Maleah sat back down at the conference table, Sanders closed the double doors and Yvette and Meredith took seats at the far end of the table. Sanders removed one of the chairs and Barbara Jean eased her wheelchair up to the table. Sanders took the seat next to her.
Standing in front of the small assembly composed of their most trusted confidants, Griff remained quiet and still for a couple of minutes, as if considering what to say and how much information to share.
“Yvette and Meredith, as all of you know, possess certain talents that can often be used to help Powell’s. Not in all cases, of course. Only in a specific few. They were allowed to see Kristi and Shelley, after their autopsies. Yvette was unable to ascertain any information that might help us. But Meredith did pick up on something.”
Maleah was somewhat of a skeptic. A partial skeptic. She didn’t actually believe in the supernatural, but she didn’t completely disbelieve either. Was it possible that some people possessed a greater degree of psychic instinct than most? Yeah, sure. But that was as far as she was willing to suspend disbelief.
Griff looked at Meredith. The shy, withdrawn young woman with the wild, curly red hair and an abundance of freckles kept her head bowed and didn’t make eye contact with Griff or anyone else.
“Can you tell us what you sensed when you were with Kristi and then with Shelley?” Griff asked.
Meredith swallowed. “They did not know their killer and he did not know them.”
A cold trickle crept up Maleah’s spine. This was just a little too weird to suit her. Were they supposed to believe that Meredith Sinclair was able to speak to the dead?
“And?” Yvette Meng prompted her protégé to continue.
“He felt nothing when he killed them. No regret. No passion,” Meredith said. “To him, it was simply a job well done.”
“Thank you,” Griff said and then focused on Derek. “I want you to work with Meredith to form a profile of our killer. There’s a good possibility that he is a hired assassin, which will make discovering his identity difficult. But if I have a profile of this man, it will assist me when I begin searching for him.”
Maleah had remained quiet as long as she possibly could. “Why would someone hire an assassin to kill Powell Agency employees?”
Griff’s hard glare bored into Maleah and for a split second she regretted being so bold.
“That is the question, isn’t it,” Griff said. “And I intend to find the answer before anyone else associated with Powell’s is murdered.”
An uneasy silence permeated the room. The soft, rapid drum of her heartbeat hummed in Maleah’s ears.
Chapter 28
Lorie had just stepped out of the shower and wrapped a towel around her wet hair when an explosive streak of lightning lit up the sky, so bright that it was visible through the white lace Roman shade covering the bathroom window. When they had been half an hour outside Dunmore on their trip home from Knoxville tonight, distant thunder and lightning had forewarned of an approaching springtime storm. After dropping Cathy and Jack by their house, she and Mike had hurried home, hoping to outrun the impending rain. They had almost made it, but as they emerged from her SUV, the bottom fell out, drenching them both to the skin. Once inside, she had gone straight to the bathroom while Mike locked up and secured the alarm system.
Suddenly a riotous boom of thunder followed another blaze of lightning. Lorie shuddered. The lights flickered several times as she reached