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even a dozen, more visits. He just hoped he could turn the kid around before he had no choice but to do his duty and haul him into the system.

CHAPTER SEVEN

    A lex shifted in the passenger seat of Charlie’s new Escape hybrid, wondering if she should tell her sister to slow the hell down. But Charlie seemed hell-bent on going wherever they were going. “Where are you taking me again?”
    “To see someone who can help.”
    “You seem to know what’s going on. Why don’t you just explain it to me?”
    “This is different. Yours is different.”
    Alex rubbed at the center of her forehead. That made no sense, but her brain felt too foggy to sort it out.
    “Headache?” Charlie asked.
    “A little.”
    “Are you seeing flashes of light?”
    Alex squinted sideways. “No. Why?”
    Charlie kept her eyes on the road, but the coiled tension in her shoulders unfurled a little. “Good. That’s good.”
    Alex decided to try another tack. “What makes you think I had . . . what did you call it? An empathic flash?”
    Charlie braked for a stoplight. “You said something in the hospital after you were shot. You were out of it, but it was something you couldn’t possibly have known unless you’d gotten an empathic hit off me.”
    “I don’t remember this.”
    Charlie went on as if Alex hadn’t spoken. “I was sitting with you, holding your hand, and when you woke up, you were agitated. You said something about a body under the stairs.”
    “I really don’t remember this.” And didn’t want to. A body under the stairs? Holy crap.
    “You couldn’t have known what I saw, Alex. Unless you saw it through my eyes.”
    “This is nuts. It’s . . . it’s . . .” She trailed off, at a loss.
    “What happened when you touched my hand earlier?” Charlie asked.
    “You know what? Let’s just go back to your house so I can get my car. I don’t want—”
    “Think about it. What did you see?”
    Alex shook her head and stared out the passenger-side window. She didn’t want to relive those moments. The pain and fear had felt all too real, all too powerful. She shied away from the memory as surely as she shied away from the idea of a root canal without a painkiller.
    “Whatever it was,” Charlie said softly, “it happened to me.”
    Alex turned her head to look at her sister. “What?”
    “You had an empathic flash on something that happened to me.”
    Alex’s nausea returned in full force. “You should pull over.”
    Charlie didn’t hesitate to swing the car onto the shoulder of the beach-access road.
    Alex stumbled out the door and made it a couple of yards away from the car before doubling over. Nothing came up this time, her heaving stomach hollow and raw, almost painfully empty. Oh, God, this can’t be real. Don’t let it be real.
    Her knees buckled, and she braced her hands in soft green grass and tried to catch her breath. A dream, a nightmare. That’s all this is. Time to wake up now.
    Please .
    Charlie appeared at her side and placed her hand on Alex’s back, soothing in gentle circles. She handed Alex a fresh bottle of cool water, the cap already removed, and waited while she took a shaky drink. Several minutes passed before Alex thought she could speak coherently.
    “He did that to you,” she whispered. “That man who tried to kill you. He kidnapped you and . . . tied you up.”
    Nodding, Charlie stroked her palm over Alex’s hair in a calming gesture. “But I’m okay now.”
    “I didn’t know it was so . . .” She couldn’t find an adequate word. “Horrible” wasn’t horrible enough.
    “You’d been shot, Alex. You needed to focus on your own recovery.”
    Alex closed her eyes and took several deep breaths to fight the churning of her stomach. Perspiration beaded on her upper lip, and she swiped the back of her hand over it. The world hadn’t made much sense to her before, but now . . .
    “We should get back into the car,” Charlie said. “It’s cool there. You’ll feel