Free Sixth Sense (A Psychic Crystal Mystery) by Marilyn Baron

surreptitiously or finish her in-flight fantasy about being tangled up in the satin sheets on the king-sized bed at the Shangri-La Hotel in Sydney, wishing Jack had not agreed so readily to sleep on the couch. She was vulnerable and thoroughly shaken up by the whole experience. She needed to be comforted. Hell, she wanted to do more than talk to Jack, as macho and insufferable as he had been. Maybe it was just the adrenalin, but she’d been having naughty thoughts about Jack throughout the flight.
    “I guess,” she said. “What’s up?”
    “You’re famous.”
    “What do you mean?” Kate straightened in her seat.
    “You’re all over the Sydney Morning Herald and The Daily Telegraph .”
    Kate grabbed the newspapers from Jack’s hand. “Why did they have to mention me?” Katherine said, lips pursed when she saw her picture splashed all over the front page of the newspaper. Her parents had repeatedly warned her not to make headlines. She read a few paragraphs about her role in the Sydney Strangler case and the recounted story of how she had predicted the death of the son of Vince Rivers.
    “What are you so steamed about? You’re the new ‘It’ girl. Apparently you single-handedly caught the Sydney Strangler.”
    “I didn’t catch him. You and the commander did.”
    “Information you provided led to his arrest.”
    “Just a technicality.”
    Jack took her chin in his hands and tipped her face up to him. “Kate, look at me. We couldn’t have done this without you. That’s a fact. So face it.”
    “I don’t want to ever have to go back there,” she said.
    “Hopefully, you won’t have to. But if we have to go to Sydney to testify at the trial, that’s a small price to pay to get that sick psycho off the streets. He won’t ever see the light of day, and if justice is finally done, we’ll execute him.”
    “I thought the commander said Australia had abolished the death penalty.”
    “We’re trying to get him extradited to Georgia, where we do have it. My team is busy trying to tie him to the Atlanta killings, refute his alibis. We have our people checking the Lord Mayor’s travel records. If we can match Junior’s DNA to the evidence we found on the dead girls at Atlanta College, and if the Lord Mayor was in Atlanta during the time of the killings and his son was traveling with him, then we’ve got him dead to rights.”
    Katherine was still looking at the newspapers with a frown on her face.
    “So what’s bothering you?”
    “I just hope the Atlanta papers don’t run anything. I don’t want my name associated with another case.”
    “Why not?”
    “My parents don’t want me doing this kind of thing.”
    “Saving lives? Isn’t your mother an attorney and your dad a federal judge?”
    “Yes, but she and my father shun publicity. They’ll be furious if this gets out. They haven’t recovered from the swirl of publicity surrounding the Vince Rivers crash. They think this sort of stuff is somehow less than respectable.”
    “Well, normally I’d have to say I agree with them. But in this case, I can’t discount what I saw or what you did. How do you feel about it?”
    “Conflicted, I guess. I’ve had these dreams, feelings, welling up inside of me ever since I can remember, and I can’t go to my parents. My mother used to call my visions headaches. ‘KC, dear, are you having one of your headaches again?’ she used to say before she dismissed them. The Vince Rivers case was the first time I acted on my instincts. It felt…good, right.”
    “Better than selling paintings to socialites?” Jack said, barely hiding his amusement. “Do you plan to work at an art gallery selling somebody else’s work the rest of your life?”
    Katherine looked up at Jack in disbelief. He was the most exasperating man. One minute he was signaling his approval and the next, dismissing her abilities. She was good at her job. Intuitively, she knew which paintings should go home with which patrons. But