“You do?” Jackson and Joy asked at the same time.
“Yep.” She quickly filled Jackson in on her new telepathic ability.
His eyes went wide, and his mouth fell open before he cleared his throat and asked, “You’re a mind reader now?”
“Not exactly. I sometimes hear random thoughts. But I haven’t heard any from you.”
He let out a nervous chuckle. “Does that mean I’m simple minded?” Jackson tapped his temple. “Nothing going on up here?”
“If that’s the case, then so is everyone else. I don’t hear a lot. Just snippets here and there. For instance, I heard Joy worrying about her children getting caught up in the drugs, but that’s all.”
“It terrifies me that one of them will fall into the wrong crowd, make some dumb decision, and then the next thing you know, something like this happens.” She waved a hand toward the display. “We’ve all heard the stories. Sometimes all it takes is once to get addicted.”
Hope nodded. “Yes, that worries me, too. For your kids, for Lex, for you, Jackson.”
Jackson jerked back. “I wouldn’t do drugs. That’s not my thing.”
She believed him, but he was also a twenty-two-year-old who’d just graduated from college and was living in a small town while trying to make it on his own. “I know, but it doesn’t stop me from worrying. You’ve been friends with Lex and Kyle for so long I feel like your auntie. The worry comes with the territory.”
He rolled his eyes, but she didn’t miss the tiny twitch of a smile that he hid. He was a good kid; she knew that. She just wanted to keep him and the rest of the young people of the town safe. Not to mention that she didn’t want Lucas’s business anywhere near drug runners. If they decided to use him and his business, who knew what they’d do to try to force him into it? Those types of people didn’t play nice.
“So, now that you know I have this new superpower,” she said. “I can tell you that last night when I was at Lucas’s open house at Against the Grain, I heard someone thinking that his business would be a perfect place to use to run drugs.”
“What? You don’t think he’d do something like that do you,” Joy asked.
“No, he wouldn’t. At least not the Lucas that I know,” Hope agreed.
“Who was thinking that?” Jackson asked.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. The place was crowded, and I couldn’t connect the thoughts to a specific person. I don’t even know what they meant by ‘run drugs through his business.’ He sells handmade furniture and accessories. Unless they are smuggling drugs in through his wood shipments, it doesn’t make any sense to me. And even if they were doing that, they’d need Lucas’s cooperation to get their goods.”
Jackson and Joy were silent as they gave each other a skeptical look.
“What?” Hope asked.
“You can’t tell what we’re thinking?” Jackson asked, his eyes narrowed.
“No, but if you’re asking me to try to read your mind, I can do that. It’s not something I particularly want to be able to do, but I’ll work it if I have to.”
Joy sighed. “I think we’re both wondering just how much we can trust Lucas. He’s been gone for a long time, and now he’s back with what looks like a pretty good-sized bank account. He bought a house with a fair amount of property and then turned around and opened a retail business. Both of those presumably take a fair bit of capital.”
Hope gritted her teeth and tried not to lash out at her friend for suggesting that Lucas might have any part in the drug trade. She knew him. Knew in her bones that he wouldn’t ever be a part of such an operation. “I trust him. That’s all we need to know.”
Neither of them said anything, and suddenly there was tension in the air.
Hope sat back with her arms crossed over her chest. “I’d know, all right?”
“Because you’re telepathic now?” Jackson asked.
“No. Because I’d know and that’s all there is to it.” She knew she sounded rigid and like she couldn’t face the truth about someone she loved. But her gut was telling her she wasn’t wrong, and she was a woman who always followed her gut.
“All right. Trust me, I definitely want to believe Lucas wouldn’t be involved in something like this,” Joy said gently. “And that’s what we’ll do unless there’s some reason to believe otherwise.”
“There won’t be,” Hope insisted.
“You’re right, Hope,” Jackson said. “I think we’re all just a little flustered. Let’s focus on who might be behind the drugs. Any ideas?”
“Can you find out the names of the three people who overdosed?” Hope asked him.
“Yeah, I think so. I can certainly shake the gossip tree.”
“Perfect. Just keep it quiet. I don’t want anyone to find out you’re asking questions. We just don’t know how dangerous these people are.”
Jackson nodded. “No problem. My gay network knows how to keep stuff on the downlow.”
Hope chuckled. “Understood.”
“What can I do?” Joy asked.
“You’re going to be my partner in crime while we check out everyone who showed up at Lucas’s open house last night,” Hope said. “You’ll be the one looking for services, and I’ll be your sidekick. We’ll find a way to bring up the issue, and I’ll try to listen in on their thoughts. We’ll also get Grace to investigate who is new in town. See if there’s a connection.”
“Definitely. I’m up for it,” Joy said, sitting up straighter. “Let’s take out the trash.” She put her fist up, waiting for a three-way fist bump.
Hope met her halfway, and then the pair of them stared at Jackson, waiting for him to join them in their show of solidarity.
Jackson groaned and made a face as he reluctantly put his fist out. “This is so uncool.”
“Maybe, but you love us anyway,” Hope said. Then she stood and pulled him out of his chair and gave him a big hug.
Chapter Eight
“Hope?” Angela Anderson called as she walked through Hope’s house. “Are you still here?”
Hope leaned against the counter and thought, Can’t you hear me?
“Yes, I can now.” Angela rounded the corner and narrowed her eyes at her daughter. “Seriously? Is this how it’s going to be now?”
A flash of guilt swept through Hope. Why was her default with her mother always so combative? “Sorry. You didn’t deserve that.”
Angela sighed. “I know we still have issues to work out, and I don’t expect us to work out everything overnight. I just hoped that we could start trying.”
“Yeah, okay. But Grace and Joy are on their way over to start working on a project. Now isn’t really a great time.” Hope pulled a mug out of the cabinet and poured herself a cup of coffee, wondering if it was too early in the day to add Irish whiskey.
“It’s five o’clock somewhere,” Angela said, giving her a cheeky smile.
Hope forced herself to keep her expression neutral instead of rolling her eyes like a teenager. Her mother had already told her she couldn’t really control what she heard, so Hope shouldn’t be surprised. What was interesting was that Hope didn’t hear things so clearly. She got snippets, and sometimes if she tried, she’d get a little more, but she definitely wasn’t being bombarded with thoughts all the time the way her mother described her own experience. Even though she knew her mother had probably heard everything she was thinking, she went ahead and verbalized her thoughts. “Is this curse going to get worse as time goes on? Am I suddenly going to wake up one day and start hearing everything everyone thinks?”