“There could be worse things than your aunt caring ‘too much’.” Lisa grunted lifting the last box from the trunk of her vintage Beetle. “She could, like, not care at all about your life. She could be like my mamma, now there’s a scary thought…Mamma’s so full of her own angsty ‘it’s all about me’ drama, I doubt she’s even noticed I moved out yet. Well, unless it was to complain about how I never help around the house anymore, and how I’m such a selfish whiner, and why haven’t I given her any grandbabies yet.”

“You’re right.” Sam propped the door off the stairwell open for Lisa. “I’ve been more than lucky.” Aunt Betty had always been Sam’s biggest supporter and had encouraged her to do whatever had made her happy. Of course, not all of the things she’d tried had worked out at all. As a matter of fact, Sam thought, none of them had worked quite the way she thought they would: running a dog walking service, a pottery studio, working at her aunt’s nursery, and a managing a restaurant, all before she had turned 25. At that point, she had decided that higher education was the answer, and had gone back to college, finally achieving her degree with some amount of difficulty. Not that the classes were all that difficult, but it had been so hard to choose what to major in, she had changed her mind several times.

She had finally degreed in business with a minor in psychology. She had achieved her license to be a private investigator after attending still more classes on the subject at a private school specializing in investigation and after passing several difficult tests, including a two day intensive concealed carry weapons course.

E. S. P. Investigations was an entirely new and completely serious direction for Sam – one that took a large amount of bravery for her, for she intended to use a talent that had nothing to do with schooling or education. Sam’s aunt, who had been raised in Missouri, called Sam’s talent “clairvoyance”, though that did not really define what it was. The books Sam had read described her gift as “Empathic Telepathy” though that did not really cover it either. Sam called it her “gift”, not that it had been such a huge blessing in her life, but it was better than believing it was a curse, which was what usually felt like. In elementary school, as Sam had begun developing into adolescence, she had all unknowingly begun to develop her gift. There had been a few strange and unsettling episodes that had made no sense to her and had been quickly forgotten. But it had all come to a head one day while playing on the monkey bars with her best friend, Sara Pikeman.

Sam vaguely remembered brushing against Sara while passing her crossing the monkey bars. This had hardly been the first time she had ever touched Sara, but this had been Sam’s moment of catalyst: her gift had chosen that moment to manifest. Looking back on it, it all made sense to her now, but at that moment, it had been as frightening and incomprehensible as being swallowed by an enormous leviathan inexplicably on dry ground.

It had all begun at Sara’s brief touch, Sam remembered the moment quite clearly. It had been bare skin to bare skin, hands brushing one another in crossing, she had so frequently replayed the moment in her mind, in slow motion, the whole scene had taken on an almost unreal quality, like a clip in a movie. That brief touch at that moment in time was all it had taken. Sam had frozen into immobility as inexplicable images had flooded her psyche, and then bonelessly dropped into the sand below. She remembered hearing the sound of Sara screaming as she drifted out of consciousness. Apparently the school nurse, and later her mother had been called. The nurse thought she had bumped her head and that was why she had passed out, but there was no bump or any other sign of a blow to the head, so Sam had ended up at Dr. Wilson’s office and had been given a once-over.

And as if Sara’s touch had not been enough, the touch of the school nurse, and later the doctor had added to Sam’s inner turmoil. Sam never liked the school nurse after that, for the emotion that had been passed on was one of impatience and anger rather than the sweetness she had always seemed to display. It seemed to Sam as if any human touch had become toxic; as if any human touch filled her head with impossible images and feelings and young Sam had been certain she was losing her mind.

Sam hadn’t wanted to talk about the episode, dreading possible repercussions. She had imagined that she would be sent away, to some hospital for the insane, and that she would never see her parents or her aunt again. She’d remained silent for at least a week, though it had seemed much longer because she had so dreaded another episode, avoiding human contact at all costs. She'd flinched whenever anyone came near her, in fact, and the few touches she allowed her parents were filled with their worry for her.

Finally one evening at bedtime, her mother had gently pried it out of her. That was when she had discovered that these visions she’d experienced were part and parcel of a gift of some sort, a sixth sense, an inherited gift of perceptive intuition. It was something that would sometimes skip generations, like a tendency to red hair, and then appear again in children whose eyes had a certain distinctive charcoal grey color.

Sam’s mother had stroked her hair and had tried to explain. “When one of us Davis girls gets the blessing of spiritualism, it always takes them when they’re about your age, honey. My own mother had the gift, though she didn’t use it too much, she either didn’t feel compelled to, or was too religious to try.” Sam had remembered photos of her maternal grandmother who, in all the pictures Sam had seen, was always wearing gloves and long sleeved blouses. It had seemed old-fashioned and quaint, but now Sam thought she knew why her grandmother had dressed that way, and wished futilely that the fashion of the day had not dispensed with gloves.

Laura Hawthorne tried to comfort Sam, holding her hand and continuing to stroke her hair. Her mother’s touch was so soothing, and the jolt of perception she received at human touch seemed to be less with her. Perhaps it was the fact of long contact, or perhaps her mother had shields of some sort, being from the same family. Young Sam had been grateful for both the human contact, and the reprieve from emotional overload.

“I only have a little bit of the gift, more of an intuition, but maybe that’s because my eyes are blue instead of that true charcoal grey you and your Aunt Betty share, and my mother had.” Laura Hawthorne had said. “At any rate, our mother told me about this special thing that some of us Davises have, because she knew she was dying and thought that we might someday have some kids of our own that would have it ‘full on’. Your aunt Betty was only 11 when our mama died, and so she told me for her sake as well as for yours, even though you hadn’t been born yet.” Her mother had continued, telling Sam about the little she knew, but telling her also that it wasn’t something to be afraid of, but to be used to help others.

“So what did you see that struck you so hard, Sammy-girl?” Her mother had asked gently. “I know it couldn’t have been something simple to have it hit you so hard the way it did.” Young Sam’s eyes had filled with tears at that, she hadn’t wanted to tell her mother what she had seen. Eventually though, she had whispered the horrors that she had glimpsed in Sara Pikeman’s life, and as she revealed what she knew to be Sara’s plight, Sam had caught a glimpse in her mother’s bright blue eyes of the grit and steel that made her mother who she was.

That night, after she’d gone to bed, Sam had heard her parents whispering and later her mother sobbing as she talked quietly to her father, and they never spoke about Sara again. But Sam soon realized that in some way, Laura Davis Hawthorne had taken action of some kind. Sara’s family moved, all but Sara’s father, and he had fallen into drinking apparently.

Once Sam remembered seeing Mr. Pikeman stumbling around the playground during school, calling for Sara, before the principal had gone out had had a talk with him. Years later, Sam had learned that he had been jailed on attempted molestation charges, apparently with his own daughter out of reach, he had tried to find another victim. Sam had never heard what had happened to him after that, she was just glad her friend wasn’t going to be suffering at his hands any longer.

It was only two years after that incident in fifth grade that her parents had been killed. The investigators had determined arson, but had never come up with a single suspect. For a long time, Sam had wished that she had been at home the night her parents died, she felt guilty for being at a friend’s house instead of with them, but Aunt Betty had eventually helped her realize that all she could have done was to die along with them. Sam came to see that Aunt Betty was just as alone in the world as she was and that they needed each other equally to get through that trying time. Sam’s mother had raised Betty, just as Betty was raising Sam, and for Betty, she’d lost her second mother in that fire. She’d lost almost as much as Sam had.

Sam shook her head and brushed at her damp eyes this time with the edge of her sleeve and carried her last box up the stairs. She had come a long way since that day on the playground in fifth grade. Not only had she come to terms with her gift “full on” as her mother had put it, she had learned to use it somewhat, though control was another question altogether. It was a frustrating way to live, to know that any person you might chance to touch in the course of a day might be like a landmine; only the only explosion took place inside Sam’s psyche. It could almost make a person want to eschew human contact altogether. And since her parents had died, Sam had tried and succeeded to a certain degree, to do just that.

She knew her parents had cared about her; through the love they showered on her and through the life they had led together. But what Sam had been too young to know was that they had thought of practically every eventuality. Because they had married so late in their lives, and hadn’t had Sam until years later, they’d had the foresight to plan for every contingency, including their own deaths. Their life insurance policies were both quite large. The homeowner’s insurance policy was also substantial, and the policies had paid better than Sam knew until she had reached her majority. Sam was their sole beneficiary, and they had also begun saving before she’d even been born, for her college education and their own eventual retirement. So, including insurance, her college fund, their retirement funds, and their investments and savings, Sam had been left with enough to get her by for some time to come. She wasn’t wealthy by any means, but her parents had possessed enough foresight and luck in the right investments to keep soul and body together.

Her trust fund, administered and invested by a trust and investment lawyer (and family friend) in downtown Phoenix, had grown more than her parents would ever have imagined, and her Aunt Betty had received funding enough to see to it that her niece would never want for anything. That and the Social Security checks that had continued until Sam was 19 had ensured that she could pretty much pick and choose what she wanted to do with her life. As she had, none too wisely at times, true, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t serious now.

But just because she had funding and an open world of possibilities didn’t mean she would know what to do with all the choices before her. That was why it had taken her so long to finally decide on her course, and return to college. It had been a better experience at her second attempt. She had found herself much more willing to put time in to learn, and found the contact with all the other students much more rewarding than she had previously done. Her additional maturity and her experience with her gift had helped when she had physical contact with people, and the gradual lessening of her fear had helped her to be more open to them.

All throughout college, she had seemed to be cast as the “den mother” to all the younger students she had gotten to know. She was older than they were, but not so much that she seemed too much like their parents. She was more sympathetic than their parents could ever be (or so they thought) and sometimes, Sam just knew who needed help, and exactly the kind of help they needed. She managed to steer pregnant teens toward choices that would not haunt them later, abuse victims toward counseling, date rape victims toward prosecution of the criminal, and young lovers toward the Justice of the Peace, among other things.

Plus, she liked to cook, and teenagers, without exception, were always hungry, even teenaged girls who were constantly dieting. Especially teenaged girls who were constantly dieting. So Sam’s home (and her Aunt Betty) became many young students’ second home, and they all called Sam’s aunt, “Aunt Betty” too. Still, with all the friends she had made, none of them had been anything more than chums who had eventually moved on toward their own futures, leaving Sam behind.

That time and all it had entailed was what had finally decided Sam on her career choice. She thought that some kind of agency where her special talent could be put to use, without it being too obvious, would be just the ticket. Of course, the “ESP” of E. S. P. Investigations, or E.S.P.I., nominally stood for “Exceptional Service Provided” instead of what might naturally occur to people. And the Yellow Pages had been very helpful in placing her ad, using large, bold typeface for the “Exceptional Service Provided” part. Brushing a damp curl from her eyes again reflexively, Sam looked around at her ambition made tangible.

“Jeez, it’s already 11:00!” Lisa exclaimed. “But this place is really shaping up. I like that we have just one room, but three separate areas. Those Japanese paper screens were a good idea, Sam.” She went on, (Lisa was a talker) while fussing with her desk drawer.

Lisa was another gift in Sam’s life, though not with the same burden her empathic gift had. Lisa was the first real “best friend” Sam had made since that day on the playground with Sara Pikeman, and Sam admitted to herself that fear was what had kept her from really opening up to people very often. Even the friends she had made in college had not been all that close. She had always been there for them, but there had been no one there for her. She had become more open, but she had never lost all of the wariness that came from bad experiences in middle and high school (mostly during sports). Sam hadn’t wanted to know other kids’ most traumatic experiences; she’d had enough of those herself, and helping others aside, it was usually a trial to have to re-live what someone else was going through.

Still, learning in 11th grade that Missy Purdue’s biggest fear was wrinkles was somewhat hilarious, especially seeing as Missy was one of those extremely tanned cheerleaders. Sam later dropped a few hints about how much the sun damaged skin, and to her surprise, Missy actually gave up tanning beds and took up sunscreen. It was one of the first actually positive experiences that had come with her gift. But even so, Sam hadn’t opened herself up to real friendship after Sara Pikeman until she met Lisa.

Lisa, with her metropolitan, big city outlook, had not struck Sam as someone who would want a home in the desert, and how she had ended up in Arizona still somewhat baffled Sam. Lisa explained that she had always liked hot weather, and big cities. She’d tried Florida and had loved the heat and detested the humidity, so she had given Phoenix a try. Then again, the fact that her father had raised her reading Zane Gray, Louis L’Amour and Tony Hillerman novels had probably influenced her some as well.

Sam smiled to herself at her friend’s impetuosity. The fact was, Lisa loved the desert, and her spontaneously charming personality was one of the reasons Sam treasured her as a friend. They had both been taking a pottery class and they had hit it off. And then there was the fact that Lisa was completely accepting of Sam’s “gift”. It had become apparent that something about Sam was ‘different’ during a particularly strong episode Sam had experienced after brushing against an abusive husband at a bank. Luckily, Sam no longer usually experienced seizures with her visions.

Most of the time she just experienced a few lost seconds of time while her brain processed the lifetime of trauma and misery it received at light speed. It was still just as intense and somewhat painful, but she rarely passed out anymore. Lisa had been standing right beside her the time Sam had experienced the brush with the bastard husband, and had seen the toll it had taken on her friend. It also explained why Sam so often shied away from human touch, and warmed Lisa to her even further. Sam always smiled when she thought about the over-protective mother hen her friend could sometimes be.

But Lisa was the one who had thought of exploiting Sam’s talent to give them an edge over any competition in the P.I. field after Sam had begun thinking about the possibility. As she had put it, “It’s gotta be good for something, right?” All this, added to the fact Lisa was an open book made her the perfect friend. She was a truly nice person, through and through. She rarely got jealous or spiteful. Lisa was always honest, though not always tactful, and she’d had a happy childhood and a perfectly nice life up to this point. And if she did lose her temper occasionally, at least it was usually over quickly. All of these points made any accidental touch a pleasant experience rather than a trial.

Sam replied, “I like what we’ve done, but it sure is a small office. Good thing we’re friends. We won’t get much privacy until we get a lot more business and can expand.” As if on cue, the phone rang again. Lisa picked up the receiver and announced, “E.S.P.I., how may I help you?

“Yes, she is, may I tell her who is calling?” Lisa put the call on hold and said in a stunned voice, “Our first customer!”

“Who is it?”

“Oh. It’s the Chief of Police, imagine that.” Lisa calmly transferred the call to Sam’s desk, where she stood, frozen for a moment, before she regained her composure, cleared her throat and picked up the ringing phone.

“This is Sam Hawthorne, how may I help you?” The voice on the line (a rather attractive voice, Sam noted distractedly) was that of Hank Morales, the police chief of the small town of Many Waters, Arizona. The town was located on the outskirts of the Phoenix Metro area, bordered by an Indian reservation on one side, but it had not yet been consumed by the city at large. Sam vaguely remembered hearing that the Many Waters city counsel had been fighting incorporation into Phoenix city limits, and had been successful so far. All of this rushed through Sam’s mind as his voice went on.

“Do you have time to meet with me regarding some work I’d like to have you do?” The chief had a pleasant baritone drawl that said east Texas to Sam. It gave her a delightful little shiver, which she quickly pushed out of her mind. This was business.

“I’d be happy to meet with you, Chief, but I am curious as to what sort of work you have for me. If you need subpoenas served, I have a process server that is quite competent.” E.S.P.I.’s process server was Lisa’s boyfriend, Marc Ivey. He was a police officer full time, and had accepted a job with E.S.P.I. moonlighting, serving documents and such.

“Nothin’ like that Ms. Hawthorne. I would prefer to speak with you in person. It is a, hmm, a rather delicate matter. Can you come by later today?”

“Certainly, but I feel obliged to let you know that although the initial consultation is free of charge, I have to charge mileage for any trip over 25 miles total.” Sam said.

“That’s fine, when should I expect you?” The chief asked. Sam wondered why he was in such a hurry. “You know how to get to the Many Waters police station? It’s just a few minutes off the freeway.” Sam got the address and pulled a map off mapquest for directions.

“I can be there by 2:30. I’ll see you then, Chief.” Sam hung up the phone with a puzzled expression on her face. “Not that I don’t want the business, but I thought police departments would have people to do investigation work for them, I mean, that’s what the police do, right? I wonder why he called me.”

“Stop wondering, complaining or griping, we’ve got our first promise of income, even if it is only mileage,” Lisa grinned at the prospect. And the phone rang again, startling them both, and making them laugh. As Sam added the first appointment to the big calendar on the wall with a flourish, Lisa answered the phone.

“E.S.P.I., how may I help you?” Lisa answered demurely. “Okay, we’ll be right down.” She said, and hung up. “Your aunt’s here with lunch, and she needs help. I think you were right about her overdoing it, Sam, why else would she need help? I love it.”