Hear No Evil Read Free Page A

last seven years? And what in hell had she been up to? He’d asked the police to work on it, but they had no zeal for it; it was not a high-priority case.
    In the meantime, he was stuck with Mimi’s bastard kid. Back at Jessie’s place, his sister was holding the fort, taking care of her. Thank God Shannon had been in town, thank God she could stay for at least one night, and thank God she, not he, was dealing with the kid.
    Owen couldn’t help himself; he avoided children, and from the start he hadn’t been able to take to this one. With her ageless eyes and unsmiling expression, she reminded him of some hobgoblin child out of a Stephen King novel.
    The first time he had seen her was late this morning. He’d been walking the dog past Jessie’s house, when, frantic, Jessie had called him in, and there, inside, was the source of her dismay—the kid.
    The kid had a thick mop of black hair and oversized hoop earrings of fake gold. She’d given him a long, somber, dark-eyed stare. Without taking her thumb from her mouth, she announced, “Your dog is dying.”
    Owen had felt his lip curl in distaste. He didn’t answer her, but he’d looked down at the old dog. It had been Laurie’s when they married, only a pup then.
    During Laurie’s final illness, she worried obsessively about the dog. Owen had promised her he’d always take care of it. But the dog was sixteen years old now and dying of old age: instinctively the kid had known.
    The child’s innocently cruel words echoed in his ears: “Your dog is dying.”
    Yeah, kid. Right. Go to hell
. If the child hadn’t been connected to Jessie, he never would have volunteered to watch over her. As much as he despised the hospital, hefound himself strangely reluctant to go back to Jessie’s house, his sister, and the child.
    He shoved himself away from the wall and strode down the hall to Jessie’s room. The old woman thought that the stranger who’d dropped Peyton off had Missouri plates on her car; she had been rattled, but she was observant as hell.
    Jessie lay propped up in bed, her leg elevated and encased in white. She was seventy-one years old, a big woman, and she had a badly bruised nose, a bandage on her cheek, and three stitches in her forehead from the accident.
    Her dander was up, because she’d been told she’d need to stay in the hospital at least nine days—her fracture was that serious. Even though her body was battered, her spirit was defiant, and her voice was still strong and hauntingly sonorous. “Did you get hold of Eden?” she asked.
    “She’s flying in as soon as she can,” Owen said.
    He thought he saw an expression of relief in Jessie’s eyes, but she thrust her chin up and looked as if she weren’t surprised. She made her living as a psychic, a phone psychic primarily, and seldom admitted to being surprised by anything.
    How she would rationalize Peyton’s unexpected appearance or her own accident he had yet to hear, but he knew she would have an explanation, mystical or practical or both, and she wouldn’t back down from it.
    With a shaky hand, she took a sealed envelope from her bedside table and held it toward him. “Give this to Eden when she comes.”
    Owen nodded and thrust the envelope into the pocket of his nylon jacket.
    “She ain’t going to be happy when she reads it,” Jessie warned in her sibyl’s voice.
    Owen raised a dark brow and gave her a questioning look.
    “She’d never come if she knowed the whole truth up front,” Jessie said darkly.
    She gave Owen a sharp look. She had strangely colored eyes; he could never put a name to what color they were.
    “The whole truth?” he asked. “What’s the whole truth? That you’d been worried about Mimi? About those calls lately?”
    She ignored the question. “Did you tell her what I said? That I wanted her? That I needed her?”
    “Yes,” Owen answered, suddenly wondering what secrets lay beneath those simple words.
    “Well, that’s truth enough,” Jessie