Free Leopard Dreaming by A.A. Bell Page B

through it. I’ll pity you later, though, when they wear off.’
    ‘I’d rather you didn’t.’ She checked her heart to ensure Ben’s note still sat snugly out of sight, inside her cleavage. ‘It isn’t you I see when I close my eyes.’
    ‘Oh, I’m painfully aware of that. His loss though, if the closest he’ll let you get from now on is your dreams.’
    ‘That’s not his fault! They tortured him. Now every time he thinks my name he relives it! If it wasn’t for —’ She bit her lip, reining herself to ensure she didn’t say anything more than Freddie would already know or guess.
    ‘Me,’ Lockman said, sounding genuinely hurt. ‘Go on, say it. I wish I had saved him before they’d begun to break him. Then you’d be with him now, and not here, torturing me with your tears. Frankly, I prefer Kitching’s running water and car battery.’
    ‘Leave any time you want!’ she snapped, even though she’d been about to blame herself again for making Ben such a target. ‘I don’t need you after all.’
    ‘No, but I’ve decided I need you. So let’s just find your matron and bag Kitching, so we can both achieve a win, finally.’
    ‘Fine!’
    ‘Fine.’
    ‘So?’ she fumed.
    ‘So what?’
    ‘So, get out of my way!’
    ‘You can see through me. I never stood here yesterday.’ He stepped back anyway, making the gravel crunch, just as a ghostly chef emerged from the inn. No chef’s hat to give him away, just an apron, a broken pot and two large bulging bags of rubbish as he headed silently for the industrial bin. Until he saw the body and dropped everything. Food scraps and cans burst in a wide circle as he spun about, screaming and bolting back into the building.
    Mira didn’t need to see what happened next as it began to play out with more staff, locals and police arriving — so fast they must have already been in the area. She needed to find the event itself, or better yet, the moment when Kitching first arrived in the alley. It hadn’t been enough to catch his ghost leaning over the body to plant the toy leopard. It wasn’t even enough to see which way he’d left. She needed to see which direction he’d come from, and whether or not he’d been alone, or with Maddy.
    Adjusting her hues a little more with tiny movements, she turned back time until she finally found him. Alone, but smiling, as if at her. As if he could see her!
    His grin widened as he walked right through her, heading for the nearest pier along the estuary.
    This way, Mira signed, expecting Lockman would see her hands move, but when he didn’t follow, she knew he must be watching for trouble in a different direction.
    She tugged his jacket and led the way.
    Kitching strode out to the end of a foggy jetty in the estuary, where he paused and withdrew a small flat package from inside the chest zipper of his wetsuit. A pink mobile phone in a clear plastic bag. Sealed, watertight.
    This is where we part company, he signed as if he knew she’d be standing there at some time in hisfuture, watching him. Can’t have you following me too closely yet, my dear Mira.
    She shivered at the sight of his cruel fingers shaping her name, but at least she could be grateful he possessed no special talent in predicting her presence, aside from logic.
    The face of the matron’s phone lit up when he touched it. Police, he said, a moment later. Anonymous tip. There’s a dead kid in the alley between the Drift Inn and the marina.
    Mira’s shiver turned to a shudder as he stashed the phone back down inside his wetsuit. That explained how the cops had shown up so quickly after the chef found the body, but obviously Kitching didn’t know Mira needed at least twelve to twenty-four hours to avoid the blinding white agony of processing faster light frequencies. So that heartless bastard had used the kid to slow her down and distract her, as if he needed to buy time that she’d already afforded him through her own weakness.
    She clenched her fists,