Free Reunion by Sharon Sala

fingertips and wondering if it ran into the depths of his brain. Something had tied his mind into knots. He closed his eyes, remembering—and wishing the hell he could not.
    “There’s a man on the ground. It’s dark where he’s lying, but I see…saw…trees. Um…he had an umbrella. It’s slightly beneath him…and the crystal on his watch is shattered.” Gabriel shuddered and took a deep breath. “As shattered as his face. The time…his time…stopped at fifteen minutes after twelve. He’s staring up toward the sky, and rain is falling onto his face and then running out the corners of his eyes like tears.” He swallowed, as if the words he spoke had a bitter taste. “There’s a small dog nearby. Grey…no, white, I think. And the rose.” He opened his eyes. His gaze caught and then locked on Laura’s eyes, staring intently, as if he was trying to measure the impact of what he was saying to her. “There’s a rose on his chest, and the stem has no thorns.”
    When she didn’t respond immediately, he leaned forward. “So…I told you. Now, you tell me something.”
    She picked up the paper and started to read. “‘The body of a man was found in Johnson Park by an early-morning jogger. It was estimated that he died around midnight. An unnamed source said that the man had died of a broken neck and that authorities have linked this murder to the killing of a woman a few days ago. In both cases, the killer left a single rose by the body as a signature. The killer’s Prince Charming gesture doesn’t change the fact that two people are dead.”’
    “My God,” Gabriel muttered. “I’m seeing these murders as they take place, aren’t I?”
    Laura laid the paper in her lap. “It would seem so.”
    No longer hungry, he pushed his chair away from the table and then stalked out of the room. Laura followed. She caught up with him in the hall and grabbed his arm.
    “Wait,” she begged.
    He turned, his mouth twisted in anger. “Wait for what?”
    “I think you should go to the police,” she said.
    He threw up his hands and all but pushed her away. “And tell them what? That I walk in my sleep and dream about murder? Hell, lady, they’ll lock me up for committing them. Nowhere in the articles does it mention the fact that the thorns on the roses have been removed, but somehow I know that for a fact. And nowhere does it mention that the last victim died with a dog whistle halfway down his throat, but it’s there. I know it, because I watched him swallow it.”
    Now Gabriel took a step forward, putting himself within whispering distance.
    “You think that’s something?” he said. “Then take a bite of this little fact and see how it tastes. You saw that beautiful rose garden out back?”
    Laura nodded.
    “It was my mother’s passion. When they began to bloom, as they are right now, she kept dozens of fresh arrangements all over the house. The scent of roses was always in the air. But she had this little quirk. She thought it was some sort of crime against nature that something so beautiful should cause so much pain. It was her habit to remove all the thorns from the stems as she put them in vases.”
    Laura blanched. The implications of what he’d just said were startling.
    “What are you getting at?” she asked. “Are you trying to tell me that you…that the killer is—” She couldn’t bring herself to finish.
    Gabriel’s face was a study in the absence of color. His skin was ashen, his lips bloodless and thinned in frustration.
    “I don’t know what I’m trying to say. All I know is I survived a wreck that should have killed me, just like it killed my parents, and all I get for my magnificent intestinal fortitude is a large dose of living hell!”
    In sudden fury, he picked up a vase from a nearby table and hurled it against the opposite wall before stalking out of the room.
    Laura listened to the sound of shattering crystal as she watched him go and wondered if that was the way a