Touch

Seventh

She offered him a brief, distracted kiss.

"Hey," she said.

"Hi."

"Come upstairs, will you?"

Lucas grabbed Katie's hand as they ascended the staircase. He squeezed it twice. She looked flustered: her hair was misty, her eyes wild, her cheeks pink. She walked fast and anxiously, gazing round as if the walls might suddenly take a snap at her if she lowered her guard.

He had no doubt she was nervous, and this certainty made an electric thrill shoot up his spine. 

He'd driven like a maniac to get here so soon. There could only be one reason Katie--beautiful, enchanting, exotic, yet unnerving Katie--had called him over so urgently.

She wanted him.

This thought was partially confirmed when she led him to her bedroom.

She sat on the messy bed with a sober face. Lucas stared her down with an equally messy grin. "I've been thinking," she said.

A short burst of Tasha's voice filled the room.

Lucas winced at the sound. "Who's that?"

"My mom. She's, um, in the shower."

"Katie." The truth, or at least part of the truth, was slowly dawning on Lucas. Katie had left the door open; she hadn't even tried for privacy. He thought of the unsatisfying kiss she'd given him when he'd arrived. And her mother was in the house?

This had never been about sex.

"Katie, you said you needed me."

She spoke tonelessly. "I do need you. I need your gun."

"What?"

"I know you always carry it with you. You-you brag about it."

Lucas was incredulous. "You can't even shoot. Why do you want my gun? What are you planning?"

Katie took a deep breath, then the plunge. "I need to prove it to them. I need to prove I wasn't lying. The only way to do that is--damn it all--to find it. I need to find it."

Lucas grabbed her shoulders and not-so-gently shook her. He was annoyed, but there might be a way to salvage this situation, maybe. He plastered a smile on his face, an effort at appearing supportive. "What are you talking about?"

"There's a hand in this house," Katie replied, holding his brown-black gaze, searching for any sign of "You're crazy" in the lines of his swarthy face.

"I don't know how or why but it came out of the tap in there" -- she pointed at her ensuite's closed door with an unsteady finger -- "and it tried to kill me." She paused. Lucas still hadn't reacted. He believes me, she thought.

"Go on," he said.

"Okay," she sighed. "It still has to be around. Maybe we can try and lure it out of the sink somehow. And then..."

"And then?" Lucas' voice was too even. "And then we shoot it?"

Katie nodded, glad he was catching on. "If we have to. We have to kill it before it disappears again. After we kill it, well, we show it to my parents." She interlaced her fingers and waited, gnawing on her bottom lip.

"That's your plan?" Lucas asked. His face was absolutely straight.

Katie nodded. She'd spoken enough.

"That's why you want my gun?"

She cleared her throat. "Yes."

Lucas couldn't help it. He laughed. He laughed and laughed. He laughed so hard his eyes teared up, his throat turned raw, and his chest felt sore. He laughed so hard he fell to his knees and clutched the ground, tapped it, slapped it. He writhed and shook as the laughter came from him, deep and guttural but undoubtedly derisive. "That-that-s-the-the-richest-richest-thing-I've-h-heard-allll-day!"

Katie's face flushed as she stood up. "You don't believe me either." The panic in her voice was thinly veiled, but somehow Lucas missed it anyway.

"Sh-sh-should I?"

"Yes, you should! This isn't a goddamn joke!"

You have to believe me. You have to.

"Katie, babe, I'm sorry, but hands don't come out of faucets. Hands do not bend every law known to Man somehow just to attack you."

"I'm going to find this hand. Whether you help me or not. I'll find it."

Lucas snickered.   

"Damn it, Luke. I really thought you'd believe me. Do I really look like I'm making this up?"

He looked at her. Her gaze was savage and boundless, blurred by nascent tears; her lips trembled and bled; her jaw clenched and unclenched itself; she was shaking.

Something had happened.

"Luke," she whispered. Her voice was scratchy, gravelly. "Please. Just humour me."

Lucas didn't know what to say. Had she gone crazy? And if he did decide to humour her, did that mean he'd gone crazy too?

Nothing was going right, nothing was going as he'd expected. His life tended to be absurdly predictable. His was a dead-end life he hoped to steer into the more venerable direction of the police academy with some financial aid from the Pops' accounts. Katie was a mystery, a variable in the complex equation of his future life -- but a variable whose equation had been mapped out. A variable he controlled and used for his gain.

Now... what?

He needed to think.

"I'm going home, okay? You're shaken up. Just rest a bit. We'll talk about this tomorrow."

He gave her sorry, gorgeous face a languid stare before he turned away. She would be angry with him, he knew that much. It might be quite a while before she let him taste her lips again. The thought made his body tight, the way someone tenses in anticipation of a painful blow.

And then another thought banished it.

There's a hand in this house.

His mouth etched a smile.

That had been rich.