Free Athena Force 8: Contact by Evelyn Vaughn

energy that sizzled through her, the emotions, the images. Someone fed him home cooking on a weekly basis. He liked beer. He spent too much time around the jail and the station and on the streets. His underlying edge of violence was a constant problem for him. He’d had sex sometime in the last month but that’s all it had been, sex, he didn’t love the woman—
    With a mew of protest, she wrenched away from him, spun to face him.
    Then she saw how his eyes widened, how he raised his spread hands and took a step back as if to show her he was unarmed despite the belt holster. She smelled his sudden guilt and confusion. That’s when she realized how she’d hunched down into herself at his touch. Like some kind of frightened victim.
    Deliberately she squared her shoulders, raised her chin, even if it felt like she’d snap something, forcing herself back into a posture she didn’t yet feel. So much for being normal.
    Roy Chopin kept his distance, lowering his hands slowly, clearly meaning to convey how harmless he thought he was. He squinted against raindrops in his eyes. “You okay there, Corbett?”
    But he was looking at her as if she wasn’t okay at all.
    “I…I don’t like being touched,” she said, blinking back against the wet. Her voice sounded only a little husky from sheer mortification. There was a statement that would win dates, for sure. “You startled me.”
    “I’m sorry.” The hands were by his sides again. He was starting to relax, to breathe again, hair dripping across his forehead. She’d scared him.
    “No, I’m sorry. I know it’s weird.”
    “I didn’t touch you till you were already out here,” he said. For a minute, she was confused. Then he said, “You just ran off. What’s up?”
    He wasn’t just confused about her reaction to his touch. He was confused about how she’d bolted.
    I sensed the killer. Then I didn’t.
    “I thought I heard something,” she said, which was at least true, if lame.
    He was feeding. The thought came to her again—but what had it meant?
    The fear, when it hit, hit hard. Absinthe! Moonsong!
    Evan!
    She spun for the hotel again—but luckily, before she could put the icing on her embarrassment cake, Butch Jefferson came through the revolving door. “Now what are you two doing out here in the wet?” he demanded, the seriousness in his gaze contradicting his friendly tone. “Son, I got something upstairs you should see.”
    Chopin gave her an after-you gesture, so they headed inside in detective-Faith-detective order.
    It was a handwritten note. Someone had found it at the empty table where Krystal would have “read.” Their shout of alarm had drawn the attention of others.
    Now too many bystanders clustered and whispered, while Butch and Roy studied the piece of Biltmore stationary without touching it.
    “‘She was delicious,’” read Roy, frowning. “‘The next one will be even tastier.’”
    The whispering of the psychics and guests and hotel staff became something closer to a group moan—a noise with too many words to retain any individuality, merely distress. But they were communicating the same fear, something Faith had already half guessed herself.
    Hadn’t she suggested the killer might come here to scope out more victims?
    “He’s a serial killer,” she whispered, giving voice to what the others were murmuring amongst themselves…kind of like she did with her informative calls as Cassandra.
    “No,” said Roy firmly, standing. “There’s no proof of that. He’s just trying to get as much mileage as he can off of the one killing we do know about.”
    “But—”
    “This is a note, not a body,” he insisted, while Butch used tweezers to lift the page into a Ziploc bag from his pocket. These detectives came prepared. “Don’t buy into his game, Corbett. It’s what he wants folks to do.”
    He was feeding, thought Faith again—and now it made sense. The killer had been high on the fear he’d created. That’s why he’d