“Psychology is probably kind of useful in understanding criminal behavior though.”
“I suppose you’re right.” Bax sat across from her and looked out over the ocean.
When they’d bought the house fifteen years ago, Moonstone Cove had been a sleepy college town and houses along the north end of the cove had been well within their budget as long as they were prepared to do some home repairs. They could never afford their little two-bedroom house if they were buying today.
It was a redwood-shingled craftsman bungalow with panoramic views of the ocean on the west, a wide deck that wrapped around the entire house, and more than enough room for two introverts. Katherine and Baxter liked North Beach because it was quiet and away from the pier. It didn’t attract tourists or students except on the weekends, and the old wooden boardwalk passed through an extensive preserved area that was rich with birdlife.
The north end of the cove was also deserted, so when the weather was good, Katherine could run in the sand, which she enjoyed.
Also, no gunmen were likely to shoot up the beach because targets were too dispersed.
What a morbid thought.
Baxter poured the tea and Katherine watched him. His hair was silver at the temples and his eyes were creased in the corners, but he still had a lean build with excellent proportions. When she’d first met him in her midtwenties, she’d imagined that he attracted too much female attention to be interested in her.
Katherine thought she was a perfectly average-looking person with symmetrical features, medium brown hair, and nice greenish-grey eyes. She didn’t focus much on her looks; it wasn’t how she was raised.
She’d thought Baxter was startlingly handsome at thirty. He was even more handsome at fifty, and his eyes still lit up when he spotted her across the campus.
“Who is that dashing man pouring me tea?” she murmured.
The edge of his too-stern mouth lifted in a half smile. “I believe it’s your husband.”
She reached for the tea he handed her. “I must be brilliant.”
“As a matter of fact” —he leaned down and placed a lingering kiss full on her lips— “we’re both certified geniuses.”
“You’re joking.”
“I’d never joke about that.” He glanced down at her feet. “What are you wearing?”
He’d taken the day off from classes to fuss over her, which she appreciated even if she didn’t need it.
“My feet are not cold.”
“How could they not be?” He nudged her slippers toward her toes. “Put them on.”
“Fuss, fuss, fuss,” she whispered. “Do I need a hat too?” She slid on her slippers. “A sweater?”
“Are you going outside?”
“It’s September, not January.”
An edge of tension tinged his voice. “You were nearly shot yesterday.”
“There is no reason to think—”
“You tackled a grown man carrying a gun and rode off the end of a treadmill. You shouldn’t be going anywhere. You have bruises everywhere and a large cut on your head. You should be resting in bed and keeping your muscles and joints warm.”
“And eating soup?”
A hint of humor filtered through Baxter’s tense expression. “Soup might be in order.”
“I feel fine.” In fact, Katherine felt very sore. She had a horrendous bruise on her hip, both her knees were aching, and the low-grade headache that had started sometime after the police had arrived the day before hadn’t left her even for a minute.
She kept seeing the grey-tinged vision in her head. She didn’t know what had happened, but her mind kept circling around to it. What had it been? Vivid imagination? Had she picked up tiny clues about what would happen that she wasn’t recalling? If she had, it would be the first time she’d been that observant about anything outside a research study.
“What do you think about visions?”
“Visions? As in precognition?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, I don’t think that’s possible.”
Katherine’s mind kept circling back to an unusual conversation she’d had months ago with a friend of a friend, a woman from Glimmer Lake in the Sierra Nevada mountains.
Katherine was a biophysicist who studied neural systems. From an academic standpoint, she’d always been intrigued by the concept of parapsychological phenomena.
Or, as some of her students would put it, “psychic stuff.”
From a theoretical standpoint, Katherine was of the opinion that any number of cognitive processes that seemed supernatural could have perfectly reasonable scientific explanations that current cognitive science hadn’t identified.
Had she ever had any reason to expect she’d experience those phenomena in anything but an academic way? Absolutely not.
But life seemed to be forcing the theoretical into the practical.
“I’m going to take the rest of the week off.” Baxter lifted his tea to his lips. “I’ll speak to Margaret about it tomorrow. I don’t think there’s anything she needs me to do over the next few days. We already had our departmental meeting.”
Katherine sipped her own tea. “It’s Friday.”
“Is it?” He adjusted his glasses. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. Very sure.”
“I see.” He picked up the newspaper, which had an article about Moonstone Cove’s recent brush with violence. “Then I’ll take next week off if you prefer.”
“Don’t be silly. I’ll be fine tomorrow and back in the classroom by Monday.” She glanced at the paper and felt a chill crawl down her back. She had to distract herself. She couldn’t keep dwelling on the horrible vision and her brush with death. “Baxter?”
“Yes?”
“I have an idea.”
“Oh?” Baxter paged through the newspaper.
“Yes, something to make me feel better.”
He lowered the paper, frowning a little. “What’s that, darling?”
“I would feel a lot better—more secure, I mean—if we had a dog.”
His mouth went into a flat line. “Of all the times.”
“Not a large dog.” She managed to keep her face straight. “Just a small… a medium-sized dog. I hear animals are very good for mental health.”
“You’re only bringing this up because—”
“I can sense that you want to fuss over me, and you’re more likely to give in when you’ve recently feared for my life?”
The amusement returned to his handsome brown eyes, and all was right with Katherine Bassi’s world again.
Except that it wasn’t.
Even if she hadn’t been sporting physical bruises, her mind knew that something very bad had almost happened. While she slept the night before, the shooting had replayed in her head; bullets tore through metal, glass, and bodies. There was blood everywhere. In her mind, she hadn’t stopped anything and dozens of people had paid the price.
What if you had ignored the vision?
She second-guessed herself in retrospect. Was it simply a vivid imagination? How could she have known? Nothing about the young man had tipped her off. The incident was a series of impossible events stacked one on top of another.