Murders & Romance: A Psychic Detective Romantic Mystery (Isaac Taylor Mysteries Book 5) by Lashell Collins (ready player one ebook .TXT) 📗

the paper cups and poured himself a full measure of the strong black coffee they always kept freshly brewed there.

He savored a sip. Then he turned to leave just as Sgt. Natalie Bains entered the break room wearing that perpetual smirk on her lips.

If he were playing into Sidney’s assertions that he was some kind of psychic superhero, then Natalie Bains would be his number one archenemy. The woman was toxic. She hated the fact that Isaac repeatedly turned her down. She’d even gone out of her way to try and make trouble for him because of it. And she couldn’t hide her jealousy over his relationship with Sidney.

She’d recently reported him to Internal Affairs for inappropriate behavior with a female witness — that female witness being Sidney. When that move failed to make things difficult for them, Natalie actually made a thinly veiled threat against Sidney. And Isaac was not having that.

Oh, yeah. Archenemy. Number. One.

Natalie tossed her blond hair over her shoulder and struck a pose.

“You look like shit, Ike. What’s the matter? Little woman keeping you up too late?”

“That’s right.” Isaac never missed a beat as he headed for the door. “She wears me out every night. Sexiest woman on the planet.”

He enjoyed the look of envy on her face as he walked past her and out the door.

He headed for the stairwell and went down two flights to the second floor. He walked past the dispatch area and made his way to Dr. Newman’s office at the end of the hall. He stepped through the open doorway, and Dr. Newman looked up.

“Sgt. Taylor! Come in, please.”

He motioned to the chair in front of his desk, and Isaac closed the door behind him before he stepped further in.

“Why do you sound surprised, Doc?”

“Well, to be quite honest… I thought you’d stand me up.”

Isaac sat down, taking a sip of his coffee.

“What would be the point? You’d just track me down again.”

“True.” Newman grinned. “Shall we?”

Isaac gestured as if to say, ‘go ahead.’

“So… how are you?”

Isaac sighed.

“Tired. Pete and I were called out at quarter to four this morning.”

“Hence the coffee.” Newman jutted his chin in the direction of Ike’s coffee cup.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Should I not drink during our session?”

Newman shrugged. “As long as it’s just coffee, I have no objections.”

Isaac stared at him for a second.

“If that was a jab at my alcoholism, Doc, you shouldn’t worry. It’s been going on eight years since my last drink.”

“Congratulations.”

“Thanks.”

“So, how long has it been since you wanted to take a drink?”

Isaac froze, cup halfway to his lips.

His stomach seized.

His heart sliced open by a memory.

“Two days ago when my fiancée had a miscarriage.”

His voice seemed hollow in the starkly quiet room, and Isaac silently cursed Newman’s stealthy ability to go straight for the jugular.

He took his sip of coffee, hoping it would soothe him going down.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Newman quietly said.

Isaac hesitated in his thanks.

“We found out she was pregnant the same day we laid Curt Dorn to rest. The same day we finally closed the book on Jeffery Schiffer and that whole legacy of death and destruction. It was like… my reward for finally catching the Lullaby Killer. That’s how it felt. Like a prize. I was the happiest I’d ever been.”

Isaac paused and thought about that.

“And then, two days ago I watched the woman I love double over in pain. The look on her face was so hard to watch. She knew. Right then, she knew something was wrong. We both did. And there was nothing I could do to stop what was happening. The blood running down her inner thigh…”

He paused again, seeing it all in his mind.

“It was bright red. And I remember thinking, ‘maybe if I can just get her to the hospital fast enough.’ But…”

He took a deep breath in hopes of steadying his voice.

“I scooped her up into my arms and got her out to the car. Even flipped on my lights and siren, but by the time we got to the ER, it was all over. And I wanted a drink so bad in that moment I would’ve done almost anything.”

He took a sip of coffee and wondered why the heck he’d just spilled his guts about the most important, most gut-wrenching moment in his life to a man he didn’t want to be talking to in the first place.

“Aside from traumatic events like that, how often are you feeling those urges to drink?”

Isaac shrugged a shoulder, but he didn’t verbally respond. It wasn’t a topic he liked to discuss.

“Are you going to meetings regularly?”

Finally, Isaac sighed. “I go once a week without fail. I talk to my sponsor. If I need more in between, I go.”

“Good.” Newman nodded. “Let’s talk about Jeffery Schiffer.”

“What about him?”

“You killed him.”

“Yes, I did.”

“How does that make you feel?”

Isaac looked him in the eyes. “What kind of question is that?”

“It’s an important one,” Newman asserted. “You’ve just killed another man, Isaac. Your second, by my count. You must have some feelings about that.”

Actually, it was his third if you counted Sidney’s former husband — the abusive, murderous pig — but that one hadn’t been attributed to Isaac since the ‘official’ story was that he’d fallen backward into a shelf, bringing the cement blocks stored there down onto his head. The actual story was the first appearance of Isaac’s telekinesis, but Newman didn’t need to hear about that shit.

“It gets easier the second time.”

Isaac’s tone was flippant, but Newman was not amused. He stared at him in that way that made Isaac nervous.

“Okay,” Isaac sighed. “Bad jokes aside, I get it, Doc. There are cops all over the country who go their entire careers never even firing their weapon once, and here I’ve killed two men in the same year.”

The first was Nacio Rivas-Solis, the drug lord who wanted Sidney dead after she’d witnessed a gangland shooting that he’d ordered.

“And how do you feel about that?” Newman asked again.

“The first man — Rivas-Solis