Read Touched (The Marnie Baranuik Files) for Free Online Page B

“of the FBI? Quantico? Virginia?”
    Like I'd never heard of such an agency. Or such a person. When my jaw snapped shut I bit my tongue; my eyes instantly watered.
    “I'm sorry to call your unlisted number. I know how much we in the industry depend on our privacy and I totally understand that you're retired and I shouldn't even be calling, except that I really need your help.” She tripped over her tongue long enough to catch a breath. “Like, really-really need your help.”
    “Like, totally really-really?” I couldn't help it. It just slipped out. I pinched my lips together to squelch a giggle. Marnie Baranuik (the Great White Shark, uber-serious) most certainly did not giggle. Ever. My only excuse was the cocktail Harry had served me in the bath. My stomach squeezed down around tumbling butterflies spitting fire into a churning void; I didn't know whether to laugh or throw up, and prayed I wouldn't do either.
    “Miss Baranuik,” she said softly, the hurt in her cute Midwestern voice vibrating down the line. “Are you making fun of me? Because I assure you, I am in some seriously fucked-up trouble. God, why else would I be calling you unless I absolutely had nowhere else to fucking turn?”
    I was gob smacked; I didn't know which surprised me more, the profanity spoken in that dainty, babydoll voice, or the way she implied she'd rather be talking to Lucifer Himself than me. Had Mark… no, he wouldn't have told her about what happened in Buffalo. But he wouldn't have to, would he? She's clairvoyant. Did she know? If she did, she wouldn't be asking me for help, would she? Well, shit. My brain reeled and the snow shovel, forgotten, clattered from my hands to the frozen ground.
    I looked around as though the answers to my problems were to be found in the ice clinging to the Aspens. Ajax the vulture watched me intently, bald head cocked, dusted ruff stirring in the snow fall.
    “Let me just get inside, you've caught me at a bad time. Hold on.”
    I threw my parka off in the door, kicked off my squeaking Keds and nearly ran to my espresso machine, skidding in cold, damp sock feet. I had a feeling more caffeine was needed, big time. Not tossing the phone in the sink in a jealous, chickening-out fit was the bravest thing I'd done in a while.
    Since I didn't hang up on her, she took that as an invitation to blather, and her words ran together the way they will when someone's out of their mind with worry. I pulled three shots into a regular-sized mug hand-painted with a cartoon frog tap dancing on a log, doctored it super-sweet, and tried to make sense of what she was saying.
    “Hold on,” I repeated. “Say that last part again?”
    “I'm positive a DaySitter and an elder revenant are responsible for the murder of Kristin Davis.”
    Elder revenant. What Batten and the hunter lot would call an ancient vampire. I took a bag of Oreos out of the pantry and tossed them on my sister's old turquoise Formica kitchen table. Harry had bought me “reduced fat” Oreos again. Probably he had a death wish.
    “How do you figure?” I asked.
    “Do you know what I do, Miss Baranuik?”
    “You're Top Floor, a second degree clairvoyant in the forensic retrocognition department.” I politely avoided the subject of her companion or lack thereof. It would have been shamefully rude, like doing the Charleston on your mother-in-law's grave. “You're capable of perceiving objects or people at a distance. Second degree means you've completed training in DEV, distant event viewing; you get visions about events that have recently occurred by applying focus to psi. It's still inadmissible in court. GD&C are working on a way to properly test and regulate DEV so the results can be used as evidence in a criminal court case.”
    “Just now, I was able to see Kristin's murder. I saw a revenant taking her head off with a big saw, with jagged teeth, like lumberjacks use? It was messy, so much blood. I saw Kristin in the alley…”
    She was making