What If... Read online

  What If…

  A Psychic Visions Novel

  Book #20

  Dale Mayer

  Books in This Series:

  Tuesday’s Child – FREE

  Hide ’n Go Seek

  Maddy’s Floor

  Garden of Sorrow

  Knock Knock…

  Rare Find

  Eyes to the Soul

  Now You See Her

  Shattered

  Into the Abyss

  Seeds of Malice

  Eye of the Falcon

  Itsy-Bitsy Spider

  Unmasked

  Deep Beneath

  From the Ashes

  Stroke of Death

  Ice Maiden

  Snap, Crackle…

  What If…

  Talking Bones

  Psychic Visions Books 1–3

  Psychic Visions Books 4–6

  Psychic Visions Books 7–9

  About This Book

  Detective Abigail Cartwright has earned a reputation for solving weird homicide cases, but, when she’s called to a lecture hall at the local university, she faces the oddest one yet. During a What If … lecture, run by soon-to-be-retired Professor Gertrude Milligan, two students died. Without any signs of how or why.

  Confused, Abby digs in to solve the mystery, only to find several old cases connect—or do they? Were the two students murdered, or was something else going on?

  Professor Leon Wellington is worried about his aunt Gertie. Their personal history was bad enough, but to have two of her favorite students die right in front of her has left her shocked and grieving. How can she not be a prime suspect in this case? Then she goes missing …

  When the past collides with the present, the stakes are higher than ever, as a killer realizes how close he is to losing everything …

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  KILL OR BE KILLED

  Part of an elite SEAL team, Mason takes on the dangerous jobs no one else wants to do – or can do. When he’s on a mission, he’s focused and dedicated. When he’s not, he plays as hard as he fights.

  Until he meets a woman he can’t have but can’t forget. Software developer, Tesla lost her brother in combat and has no intention of getting close to someone else in the military. Determined to save other US soldiers from a similar fate, she’s created a program that could save lives. But other countries know about the program, and they won’t stop until they get it – and get her.

  Time is running out … For her … For him … For them …

  DOWNLOAD free military romance? Just tell me where to send it!

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  About This Book

  Complimentary Download

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Epilogue

  About Talking Bones

  About Simon Says…

  Author’s Note

  Complimentary Download

  About the Author

  Copyright Page

  Prologue

  Seattle, Washington

  Gertrude Milligan strode down the stairs, studying the empty amphitheater. She was ready for her class, but, as always, she was a few minutes early. She liked to settle into the space alone, before the doors opened. It helped. After all these years, teaching was getting longer and harder, and she just wanted to sit down, have a cup of tea. But this What If? philosophy class was a new one that she enjoyed teaching, and she was here, bright and early.

  As she approached the main platform area, she walked to the podium and dumped her paperwork on top of it. She rolled her neck slightly and stretched her shoulders back. She was coming to the end of her reign. She wasn’t quite ready to retire, but, at sixty-five, she knew it was time. Giving up her research would bother her the most. She absolutely loved the research. She didn’t mind the kids. Some of them were even incredibly intelligent and kept her hopping. They kept her mind going.

  And the rest of them were just here because they needed the credits, before they moved on to the rest of their dull, boring lives that had absolutely nothing to do with the what ifs in the world, and that was a damn shame.

  She walked to the chalkboard, wincing, because of course, nobody had cleared off the last lecture. She quickly took the eraser and wiped down the board, wrote the name of her current lecture at the top, and underneath it wrote What If? in large bold lettering. Then, just as the doors opened, she turned toward the class. She walked back and forth on the platform, keeping her mind open, thinking about the million things in her day, until slowly the trickle of students came in.

  After a glance at her watch, she called out, “Two minutes.” And it always seemed like, in that last minute, about half of the class poured in. She frowned at the noisy group. All of them knew her by now. They’d been in her class for at least three months, were reaching the end of the term, and exams were coming up. She was ready, but she didn’t think they were.

  A class like this was supposed to make them think, to keep them on their toes, and to keep their brains nimble. Instead it seemed to have the opposite effect and put so many of these kids to sleep. As Gertrude looked at some of the older students, they were hardly kids anymore. A couple were under twenty, but most of them were in their early twenties, midtwenties, late twenties. She knew at least one was in her midforties. She even had a couple in their sixties here.

  “Time,” she called out.

  The two students closest to the doors got up, let in a few scrambling students, and then closed and locked the doors. She was strict on that. There were to be no interruptions. If a student couldn’t be here on time, they couldn’t be allowed to disrupt the rest of her class. She waited a moment for everybody to calm down and to stop shuffling. And then she started.

  “Good morning, everyone. Glad to see you could make it so early.” They all cracked a smile. “I know. Lots of final projects, lots of studying for exams to do, as we begin next week. This is our last lecture class, but don’t worry. You’ve come this far, and you’ll make it.” A twitter of laughter echoed through the group. She smiled. “As always, we’re talking what ifs. We already discussed in this class: What if aliens arrived? What if Armageddon happened? What if a Third World War happened?

  “Today, as in some of the other topics, this one will be completely different. We’ll discuss psychic phenomena. But not just any psychic phenomenon because, of course, it’s a very wide field. There are psychics, and then there are mediums, who don’t necessarily consider themselves psychics—like the aura readers, the healers, all kinds of different classifications and groups. But I want to talk about something completely different today because, of course, my mind always thinks in terms of what if.” She looked around at the class, noting that everybody leaned forward with interest. “Say, for example,” she stated, pointing to the row in front, where three females sat together. “Say these three women were targeted.”

  At that, the trio straightened up, and one asked, “Targeted for what?”

  Gertie laughed. “I don’t mean targeted, targeted. I don’t mean to be stalked or with a targe
t on your back or with a gun or something. But let’s just say, what if you had a back door into your mind? What if other people had a way to put ideas in your head? What if people could control your thinking? What if people not only controlled your thinking but your actions? Has anybody ever thought about this?”

  A couple students put up their hands.

  She continued. “And you’re thinking more of the movies, aren’t you? Like, you know, mind control and other things like that, right?”

  They both nodded.

  “Right? So think about psychics. Think about energy. Think about people who can heal somebody else just by waving their hands over the surface of an injury and pouring supposedly loving energy into that area. What about people who can stand here and look at you and see your past life all in your energy?” She waved her hand around one of the male students, standing off to the side. “They can check out your history. They can go into something called akashic records—the Book of Life—and see all kinds of stuff.

  “And then we have others, energy forms, where people have hooks into each other because, of course, we either love or hate them. These can form at birth, and they can continue right through until your death. Sometimes people say diseases can be caused this way because you’re so full of other people’s negative energy that you poison your own soul,” she murmured. “But what if—now think about this—what if there was a back door to your mind? And somebody else had access to it?”

  She looked at the three women, part of her previous example to the class. “I mean, just what if somebody stood up here today, without you even knowing it, and could get into your mind, while you sat here in class? What if that were possible? Now think about it, and then raise your hands and toss out the possibilities of what we could be looking at.”

  After that, the class discussion was a little slow to start, but then people came up with myriad ideas about how to run countries, how to control somebody’s love life, how to gain access to bank accounts, how to control relationships. Gertrude nodded and wrote a lot of them on the board.

  “Think bigger. Think Third World War,” she suggested. “What if somebody was controlling somebody else from a distance? I mean, just because we have a back door to the mind, does that mean the person has to be sitting right beside you in order to control your mind?” She looked at the trio of students again and asked, “What if the one in the middle could access the two outer women of this group?”

  The women just stared at Gertrude, and the one in the center, Carrie, said, “I don’t think I like being here.”

  Gertrude laughed. “Think about it. What if somebody from somewhere else in the world had access because energy”—and she turned to look at the class—“energy …”

  And the class cried out, “Has no boundaries. For energy, there is no life. There is no death. Energy is forever. Energy only transforms. So what if?”

  By the time the hour-long class was more or less done, it had been a very animated session, and Gertrude was delighted. She readied the last of the homework for her next class. “It’s that time, and it’s been a pleasure, everybody. Good job. Feel free to take off, to get ready for your exams, and we’ll see you next term maybe. If not, have a good life.”

  And, with that, everybody gathered up their stuff.

  Gertrude walked over to the chalkboard, grabbed the eraser, and started clearing off all the notes that she had put there. A small shriek and a weird silence had her turning to look. She asked, “What’s the matter?”

  While everybody else was still streaming out the doors up at the top, an entire group of people around the front row just stared at Gertrude and then looked at the group of women, still seated there.

  “We forgot one what if,” said Carrie in the middle, who now stood, her voice high and strained.

  “What’s that?” Gertie asked.

  “What if the back door to the mind could kill someone?”

  Gertie shrugged. “Well, if anything else is possible, that is too. Why?” she asked.

  Carrie looked at her professor in shock, then turned to the women seated on either side of her. “Because both of them are dead.”

  Chapter 1

  Detective Abigail Cartwright stood at the top of the amphitheater and studied the layout ahead of her. Her partner was on the way. Forensic technicians were moving silently in their blue suits and booties, and, up at the front, an older lady sat, perched stiffly on a stool. Her energy looked like it had completely drained away, leaving only her ramrod spine to keep her in an upright position. A man stood at her side, with a hand around her upper arm, as if giving her strength. And maybe he was. Abby definitely noted a connection between the two. At that moment her partner, Harvey, stepped up to her side.

  “I heard this one is bizarre.” Just enough amusement was in Harvey’s tone to make her groan.

  “Aren’t they all?” Abby sighed tiredly, not wanting to even open her other sight. Just the thought brought on a headache. Then the headaches had been getting steadily worse over the last few years—to the point she’d wondered if she needed to change her line of work to ease them back. There’d been a lot of bizarre cases lately. She was ready for a nice simple open-and-shut murder case. Too bad this wouldn’t be one. “But they all come down to the same thing though. Somebody killed somebody else, for some reason important only to them. We just have to find out what that reason is, then backtrack it to whoever did it.”

  Harvey and Abby walked down the wide steps between the rows of seating. There was an odd echo to her steps on the wide wooden stairs. Almost like the sound of the booming inside her head. The huge amphitheater lecture hall sloped down to the small center stage, backed up to a wall, sporting supersize black chalkboards and also whiteboards.

  “And yet in this case,” he added, “nobody saw anything.”

  She nodded. “I heard that. That’s not exactly news either. The bit of briefing I got was garbled, to say the least.”

  “Exactly.” He motioned toward the two females sitting in the lowest row, facing the podium. “Two dead? That’s odd.”

  “Yes, and the woman sitting right between them is not dead and apparently didn’t see anything.” He looked at her sideways, and she nodded. “Which makes her the likeliest suspect, I know.”

  “But why would you kill people in front of everybody else, when you’ll be the obvious suspect?” He studied the hall. “That makes no sense.”

  “Because,” Abby added, “if nobody saw anything, including the suspect student in the middle, it’s pretty damn hard to prove it, isn’t it? She’s also the one who’s the most visible, and, therefore, in a way, the one least likely to have done it. She looks like she’s completely innocent, yet it’s also possible these women were killed to get at her.”

  “That’s another option.” He nodded. “I hadn’t really considered that.”

  “As soon as we found out a woman was in the center,” she murmured, “I immediately thought, either she’s a victim or she’s the target.” Of course Abby had been wrong before. So keeping an open mind was paramount.

  “Interesting.” Harvey paused. “Well, this will be one for the books either way.”

  “Yeah, let’s just hope it’s not too crazy a case.” She was making a name for herself but not in a way that made her comfortable.

  “Hey, you’re getting well-known for handling crazy.”

  “But that’s the last thing I want to be well-known for,” she replied in alarm. “I’d like crazy to disappear.”

  “Oh, come on. Crazy has no intention of disappearing,” he noted cheerfully. “Besides, just think how much less boring our world is, compared to the other detectives.”

  “I get it,” she agreed, “but you know these crazy cases are guaranteed to keep you up at night. Besides, you’re the one who gets nightmares over these types of cases.”

  “Hell.” He snorted in disgust. “I haven’t slept in forever.”

  She wanted to make a comment about it because she could smel
l the booze on his breath but didn’t dare. He was pretty sensitive to it, and with good reason. But, at the same time, as long as he was sober and did his job and didn’t kill her when he was driving them around one day, she was willing to give him the chance to keep functioning at the level that she needed.

  He was her partner, and definitely a bond existed between them, but also a sadness—knowing that he was sliding downhill, out of control, and she could do only so much to help. Particularly when he couldn’t or wouldn’t see that he had a problem, and he didn’t want any help, for sure. They’d worked together for six years now. Since she’d first made detective at the age of twenty-seven. He’d known her for years before. Had even helped her pass her exams and had asked for the partnership. She’d been thrilled.

  Abby descended the amphitheater-style lecture room stairs studying the layout of the room. Hard to imagine a double murder could go unnoticed in a full class.

  “Did you ever go to school at a place like this?” Harvey asked her.

  “I did attend a few classes,” she replied quietly.

  “What, for philosophy or something like that, wasn’t it?”

  She nodded slowly, not filling him in on the details.

  “And why did you quit?”

  “You know why I quit,” she said. “I found law enforcement and went there instead.” She’d been trying to get into the academy at the time but exploring options—in case she didn’t make it in.

  “Oh, right.”

  Although she still hadn’t found all the answers to her parents’ deaths, when she was just a child of eight, it had set her on the path of justice. She suspected that, at this point, there was no walking away. She periodically entertained the idea that she would do something different one of these days, but it never seemed to happen.

  Recently she’d solved a couple really weird cases, so now all the weird cases automatically seemed to come to her. And she was okay with that, except that she knew she was crossing some lines in terms of what the world would accept for answers, and that made it tough to deal with. How did you give a victim’s family answers that dealt with psychics and energy work? Not that she was a pro at any of that. In truth she was a rookie, and her skills, no matter how hard she tried, never improved.