Always Look Twice

Allie was a full-time artist and a part-time art teacher at a senior citizen’s community center. She had a way with elders. With kids and animals, too. She spoiled a black cat, a stray she’d named Samantha that hissed at everyone but her.

Olivia stood back, watching her younger sibling. Although they were only a year apart, eighteen and nineteen when their dad had died, she’d always been protective of Allie.

And for good reason. Most of the time, Olivia’s sister floated through life, ignoring her surroundings. At the moment she wasn’t paying attention to anything except the health-food groceries she was arranging in a walk-in pantry.

“What if I was the Slasher?” Olivia said.

“What?” Allie spun around, her waist-length hair whipping across her body. She wore an ensemble of Southwestern-style clothes, gauzy fabrics decorated with turquoise jewelry she’d bought at a pawnshop.

“You didn’t even hear me come in,” Olivia told her. “I could have been the killer.”

“The door was locked. You have a key.” Allie stacked several cans of vegetarian chili on an already crowded shelf.

“That’s not the point. You’re oblivious.”

“I have street smarts.” The younger woman gestured to a nearby window, where designers, retailers, manufacturers and apparel marts converged in the Fashion District. “Look where we live.”

Olivia shook her head. Their loft was located above a trendy little shoe store and a gourmet coffee bar that baked fresh muffins throughout the day. Even now, the aroma of banana-nut bread wafted through the air, along with the scented candles Allie routinely burned. She existed in a dream world, right along with the fantasy creatures she painted.

“I’m going to teach you to shoot.”

Her sister’s dark skin paled. “No. Not after what Dad did.”

“You need to learn to protect yourself.”

“Not like that.” When Allie cocked her hip, the shiny belt cinched at her waist made her look leaner than she already was. She was tall and graceful, stunningly lithe. Their mother had been a dancer when she was young. Olivia and her sister had inherited Yvonne Whirlwind’s long shapely lines. Of course Olivia had inherited more than that.

Their mom was psychic, too.

The woman who’d walked out on them, she thought. The woman who’d purposely disappeared.

“It’s bad enough that I have to put up with your arsenal,” Allie said. “Most girls collect pretty trinkets. But no, not my sister. She collects weapons.”

Enough of this, Olivia thought. “A wanagi was in my car today.”

Allie’s skin went pale again. A sun catcher in the window bathed her clothes in a prism of dusk, giving her a gypsy-in-the-mist quality. “What did it want?”

“It led me to the motel.”

The younger woman hugged herself. Then she walked out of the kitchen and into the living room, where the massive loft nearly swallowed her whole. The walls were covered with a mural she’d painted, with unicorns and fairies and an armor-clad knight slaying a winged dragon.

Olivia followed her. “Don’t shut me out, Allie.”

“I’m not.” She rubbed the goose bumps on her arms. “Sometimes ghosts bring messages. Dad used to say that.”

“I know. But I’m not sure what this wanagi was trying to say.”

“Maybe we should leave some food out for it, the way our ancestors used to do. If we don’t, we might offend it.”

Olivia thought about the vegetarian chili Allie had packed in the pantry. “I don’t think it would like that healthy crap you eat.”

They looked at each other and laughed, breaking the tension. To the Lakota, ghosts were wakan, hard to understand. Sometimes they haunted people, twisting their mouths and eyes. And sometimes they whistled outside someone’s home. Olivia’s ghost had done neither.

“Maybe it just wanted me to confront the motel,” she said. “To quit avoiding it.”

Allie sank onto a velvet sofa laden with embroidered pillows, a fat white candle flickering on the wrought-iron table beside her. Shadows swirled on the walls, making her mural come to life. “Maybe the wanagi was Dad.”

The room nearly tilted. Olivia hadn’t considered that possibility. She glanced at the gun cabinet in the corner. She still had the.44 Magnum he’d used. “Why would he make me go there?”

“To stop those visions you keep having of him,” her sister said.

“If that was his intention, it didn’t work.”

They sat quietly for a moment, lost in thought. The banana bread aroma was gone, but vanilla-scented wax filled the air, like a milkshake melting over a flame.

“Who do you think is staying in that room?” Allie asked.

Olivia recalled the heavy beige drapes in the motel window. “I don’t know. Lots of people have stayed there.”

“But who’s there now? Who was the ghost trying to make you aware of?”

Olivia’s heartbeat blasted her chest. And suddenly she knew.

Ian West.

The special agent with the glowing eyes.

Chapter 2

Olivia parked her Porsche around the corner and entered the office of the Z-Sleep Inn, where the woman behind the counter gave her an empty smile.

Good, she thought, the clerk’s mind was on something else, and preoccupied people were easy to fool.

Olivia had covered her jumpsuit with a long black sweater, a bulky cardigan that toned down her look. But that was part of her ploy.

“May I help you?” the other woman asked.

“Yes. My husband is checked into Room 112. His name is Ian West.”

The clerk merely nodded. She was a color-treated blonde with wire-rimmed glasses, an averagely attractive girl in her midtwenties whose name tag identified her as Carla.

When Olivia’s sixth sense kicked into gear, she realized Carla was new to the area. That she was trying to sell a screenplay.

That was even better.

Olivia opened her sweater, exposing the skintight jumpsuit. “I flew in to surprise Ian. He’s here on a business trip.” Next she adjusted the bondage belt around her hips, flashing an I’m-going-to-handcuff-my-husband-to-the-headboard smile.

Carla’s eyes grew wide, but she didn’t overreact. This was Hollywood, after all. And she was trying to fit in.