Free PsyCop 4: Secrets by Jordan Castillo Price

Victor?”
    “Yeah?”
    “Bring your pills with you.”
    Huh. So it was a cop, after all. I wondered where I’d been standing when they’d been passing out the deductive reasoning talent. Most likely in the “show me the dead people” line. I’m guessing it must have looked a hell of a lot shorter.

-SEVEN-
    I pulled up to the slushy curb at the arrivals area and spotted Lisa. Her hair was in a single long braid and her nose was red. She looked shorter than I’d remembered, and more Hispanic, as if my mind’s eye had been Caucasianizing her in the months since I’d last seen her. She got into the car, wedged a purse that was big enough to carry a sledgehammer into the front seat with her, and snapped her seatbelt on with excessive force. She wore a heather-gray tracksuit with cropped pants, and her ankles were turning blue from the cold. She had no winter coat, and to make things extra weird, she was wearing big, dark, Paris Hilton-style sunglasses.
    I stared at her. It was hard to tell where she was looking. “Are you okay?”
    “Let’s just go,” she said. She sounded tired.
    I wondered if I had a Camp Hell flashback coming on. Please, no. I was driving. “Did somebody hurt you?”
    “Why would you say that?”
    “You’re answering my question with a question…what’s with the sunglasses? Do you have a black eye?”
    She pulled the sunglasses down her nose and glared at me over the top. Her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy, but no bruising. “I just don’t want everyone to see me crying. Can we go now?”
    Oh. Right. Maybe I hadn’t been so far off the mark about women cops and tears.
    I almost wished she did have a few contusions to show for her time at PsyTrain, because I was edging close to full-panic mode from the thought that they’d done something even worse to her that I couldn’t see. I did my best to stop stealing glances at her and keep my eyes on the road. It had snowed all night so traffic was shitty, and Lisa didn’t seem to want me staring at her. I turned up the car heater to full blast and picked my way through traffic to the Tollway. I merged on and got stuck in an afternoon rush hour gridlock. Or maybe there was an accident up ahead. Either way, we weren’t moving.
    I waited for Lisa to talk. She didn’t. We crept forward a few yards, then stopped again. I glanced over at her. She was unreadable in her dark sunglasses.
    “Look, the fact that you haven’t spoken to me for months? That pisses me off. But forget about that for a second. Right now, you’re freaking me out big time. Why are you here, and what’s the deal with PsyTrain?”

    “I just need some Auracel.”
    “You shouldn’t take it in a moving vehicle.” Total bullshit. “Don’t worry. I promise I’ll only ask you questions outside the realm of si-no . Are they letting you sleep? Do they have some kind of empath digging around in your head? What other meds are you on?”
    “You serious?” Lisa glanced at me, but I couldn’t see her eyes. “Nothing like that. It’s not about PsyTrain, it’s about me.” Lisa stretched her feet out under the heater vent and pushed her shoulders back into the seat. She shifted and wiggled, and adjusted the tilt until she was so far down she’d need to strain to look out the window. “It’s really messed up to be a Psych.”
    “There’s a newsflash.”
    “I never understood why you took drugs all the time. I figured it was better to be able to see where the ghosts were so you could avoid them.” She sighed and pointed the dashboard vent at her face. “Now I see why sometimes you just get sick of all the knowing.”
    “I don’t think you can compare our talents. They’re too different.” And besides, I don’t know shit. I mean, crap.
    “It’s just a different way of interpreting information. But we both see stuff that other people can’t.” She turned to look at me, finally, but I left her in my peripheral vision and kept my eyes on the road. “Maybe no