Page 539 of Cold Case, Warm Hearts

“Coming!”

I groan because my head really hurts. I scrub a hand down my face, then open my eyes.

Everything inside me goes cold.

I’m not in my bedroom, the sun cascading through a stained-glass transom at the head of my bed. Eve is not standing at the doorway, yelling at Burke to let me sleep in, and Ashley is not pushing past her to bounce in, pounce on me, her hands finding my face for a good morning smooch.

I stumble across the bedroom floor, then to the front door of the apartment and pull it open.

It’s just Burke, standing there in a puddle of early morning light, sliding in across my tiny apartment living room. Young, with hair, that stupid soul patch, and he looks a little like he’s going to hit me, something gnarled and dark in his expression.

“What—what are you doing here?”

“How did you know?”

“Know what?—?”

He strides past me then whirls around. “Get ready. We gotta roll.”

I press my palm to my temple, head still feeling thick as tar. C’mon, I had a half a glass of wine, for Pete’s sake.

And that was yesterday, in my dream.

Except…

The tan carpet is soft against my bare feet, my young man’s body awake for the morning … I’m still here.

In 1997.

“Know what?” I say for the second time.

“A second bombing. It hit the coffee shop on Lyndale and 35th. Five people dead so far.How did you know?”

I’m shaking as I go into the bathroom, turn on the water, splash it on my face. Because that’s what people do when they’re losing it. When they can’t believe the reality thrown at them. When they want, desperately, to wake up.

When they realize that, I don’t know how, but …this is not a dream.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Irode by Mickey’s bike the first time in my half-frantic, growing panic, my legs churning, my throat stripped from screaming his name.

Only on my second pass up the road did I spot a flash of red. Half-hidden in the grasses, a clump of daisies jutting through the spokes as if in silent sympathy, the bike lay crushed, violated.

Beaten.

It lay in the weeds, tossed haphazardly aside as if a nuisance. A red Mini Viper, with platinum racing stripes on the fender, a foam cushion across the front bar, padded handlebars and dirt-bike wheels. Mickey got it for his eighth birthday only two weeks before he disappeared.

The front tire rim sagged, as if it had hit a boulder, dumping the rider over the handlebars. Dimples marked the paint, and a scrub across the red revealing the silver frame told the story of a struggle against the dirt road.

As if Mickey had scrabbled to his feet, tried to right the bike.

And was taken mid-action.

There’s a hiccup in time when tragedy occurs, a moment before it becomes personal, the information still clinical, still objective before it settles into a person’s brain, trickles into theirbones, poisons their blood. It’s in this moment the instinct of disbelief kicks in, an invisible hand that snakes out to stiff arm the truth.

To protect.

To prepare the body for the onslaught of truth.

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