Heaven Painted as a Cop Car Read online

  So Eve had a chance to go from a worthless husband and a dead job to being someone who could help save people and work with superheroes and gods.

  Not counting staying with the hunk of a man sitting across from her. She had no idea how she would figure out the sex problem, but given time, and work, she imagined it might be possible.

  How could she say no to that?

  “I would be honored,” she said out loud.

  Reanna smiled and nodded.

  Cascade’s excitement at her answer sent tingles to places she hadn’t felt tingles in a very long time.

  Damn, this being dead was going to be a blast.

  Who knew?

  PART TWO

  A Really, Really Bad Guy

  EIGHT

  EVE BRYSON WAS DEAD.

  She knew that for sure now and liked it more than being alive. And now after a month or so, she was getting used to all the perks that came with being dead.

  She had avoided anything to do with her funeral and her ex-husband and her old life. She was dead. Even though she was still hanging around the world of the living, she had moved on.

  And she had a crush on Deputy McCall Cascade.

  More than a crush, actually. She was in lust with him and maybe falling in love with him. Sometimes the two sort of got mixed up.

  So even though she had been in Las Vegas training for a month, they had continued to learn about each other as much as they could.

  For Eve, the training with two other Ghost of a Chance agents had gone great.

  And she had discovered that ghosts had some pretty nifty powers.

  For example, she knew how to be inside another person and control that living person. She would never do that with Cascade, but she sure could do it to normal people and who knew when that would come in handy.

  And she could teleport anywhere she wanted to go. That allowed her to check in with Cascade during her training every day. They had dinner together every night and both of them loved it.

  She got to hear about his day, he got to hear about her training. She loved having someone to talk to.

  With the help of a few other superheroes, including the famous Poker Boy and his girlfriend Patty, Eve had her own condo in the Pearl district of Portland.

  When Eve had asked how they could do that, Patty had told her that they were so rich they didn’t know what to do with all their money, so they could use it as a tax shelter by buying a condo and then not renting it to anyone alive.

  Patty and Sherrie, another superhero, even helped Eve furnish her condo the way she wanted it so she had her own place, with dishes, a toilet seat without a lid, and everything.

  The other ghost agents found it great that she was working with a superhero as a partner.

  A live superhero.

  Something very different.

  As one of them said, she was doing something that had never been tried before in thousands and thousands of years.

  It was going to be interesting to see how it worked out.

  Up until a few weeks ago, she didn’t even know that any of this ghost and superhero world even existed. But she had to admit, being dead and being a ghost agent was a lot better than being alive and being with the worthless husband she had been stupid enough to marry. She didn’t miss him or her old crappy job at all.

  Not even for a passing second, which when she thought about it, was very sad. Her living life had been pathetic.

  And she really didn’t miss being alive in the slightest. This was much, much better.

  One of the very weird things about being dead was that the food tasted better. Everything around her seemed more alive as well, and from what one of the other ghost agents had hinted at, the sex was better too.

  With other ghost agents.

  But she was far, far more interested in having sex with Cascade.

  And he seemed to be interested in her as well. He had a smile that could melt the paint off a freeway sign at a half-mile and she loved just sitting across from him over dinner and seeing that smile.

  And he said, and she believed him since she could read his thoughts when she wanted, that he loved her long brown hair, her button nose that others found cute and she found sort of weird, and her blue eyes.

  She only came up to his chest in height, but since very few people could see them both, that made no difference at all.

  The biggest thing was that she could make him laugh and he liked that.

  And she loved watching him laugh.

  Since she had been inside his head, she knew he liked her, was attracted to her, wanted to be with her. They just hadn’t figured out the logistics of a relationship yet between superhero and ghost. If she had anything to say about it, they would.

  Especially the sex part.

  It might take time. Both of them had all the time in the world.

  She was dead, he was basically immortal.

  Worked out perfectly.

  NINE

  CASCADE HAD REALLY missed Eve during her days away training in Las Vegas. So he had focused on just learning more about the job as deputy sheriff and also more about being a superhero.

  He and Reanna had talked a few times. One lunch at a small café with little traffic and decent sandwiches, they had had a great conversation. They had moved out onto an open patio so no one could overhear them. The day wasn’t hot yet, but it was warming up quickly. Reanna even took off her hat for the first time since he had known her.

  She had longer hair than he had thought she had, but it had been tucked up under her hat and pinned there.

  Over a grilled ham and cheese, he had been surprised to find out that he was fairly unique. That only about ten superheroes worked in law enforcement around the United States and less than one hundred total around the world.

  “We can’t help everyone,” Reanna had said as she worked at her club sandwich. “But we try to recruit superheroes like you in critical areas and the Portland area is a critical area into the future.”

  She didn’t explain why and Cascade hadn’t pushed.

  “I’ll have Screamer, who is one of our superheroes and working with Poker Boy at times, come and talk with you. He’s a Las Vegas detective.”

  “Screamer?” Cascade had asked.

  “A nickname that has just stuck,” Reanna said. “He can read minds and connect two people in thoughts through him. He can also plant images in people’s minds and one day got a really nasty slime-ball to give up a location of where he had buried a young girl alive by putting horror images in the guy’s mind and making him scream.”

  “Am I going to be able to do things like that?” Cascade asked, not really sure he liked the idea of making people scream. Not his style.

  Reanna had shrugged. “Everyone develops their own powers in their own time. No telling what you will be able to do. Give it time.”

  The only thing he could do was just nod at that and go back to eating.

  After a week of Eve being gone, she appeared in front of him one day while he was eating lunch at Denny’s. She was smiling and looking worried at the same time.

  “Be right back,” she said, looking around and laughing.

  Then she vanished again.

  Two minutes later she was back, really smiling. “I can teleport anywhere I want!”

  He laughed at the excitement in her voice.

  “I’m learning a lot,” she had said. “You up for dinner tonight?”

  “I would love that,” he had said. “My place.”

  And after that, every night for the rest of the month or so of her training, they had had dinner together.

  And that made him missing her feel a little less intense.

  But when she jumped away every evening to go back to her hotel room in Las Vegas, his apartment once again felt empty.

  He had no idea how he could miss a ghost as much as he did.

  But there was no doubt how he felt about her.

  No doubt in the slightest.

  TEN


  EVE WAS SO glad that Cascade’s boss in the superhero land had given him the power to see and hear her. And so in public all they had to do was be careful that he wasn’t seen talking to himself too much, since no one else could see her.

  To solve that problem, he had gotten a thin microphone that extended from an earpiece. She had laughed when she saw it and wished she could kiss him for being so smart. Now if someone did see him talking to her, that person would think he was just talking into his microphone.

  The only other thing they had to be careful of was the dash camera inside his patrol car when he made stops. That was the only time it came on.

  On her first full day back from training with the other ghost agents, she and Cascade had figured it would be a good idea for her to just ride along with him on a standard patrol.

  She liked that idea. Neither of them was sure how this “working together” was going to be, so a standard patrol day seemed like a logical place to start.

  The first time she had ridden with him in the patrol car to the restaurant, sitting there beside him had felt right to her.

  The patrol car smelled faintly of his soap combined with a leather smell from his belt and a computer smell from the equipment between the seats. She liked this car. It had been her refuge from the rain after her car wreck the first hour she was a ghost.

  Now she felt comfortable in the front seat beside him, sitting in her jeans and white blouse, her hair pulled back.

  He was in his full uniform, blue with dark trim, with a wide-brimmed hat just behind him on the floor between the seats so he could grab it easily.

  The Portland July weather was only in the 80s, with bright sun promising to warm up the afternoon.

  They had started their patrol at seven in the morning, and since there were no cameras or microphones in the car unless they were stopping someone or in pursuit, they chatted about her training, about the few other ghost agents she had met, and so on.

  Then a half-hour into the ride, he saw a speeder in a blue Ford sedan passing cars in a no-passing area.

  “There’s an accident waiting to happen,” she said.

  “Let’s see if we can stop it from happening,” he said, flipping on his lights and pulling out after the speeder.

  At that point the inside camera and microphone were working, so he had to be careful, but she could talk to him out loud just fine, since no one but him could hear her.

  As he pulled out after the speeder, Cascade tapped a button on his steering wheel and on the computer screen she could see he was connected to his dispatcher.

  Through a shorthand form of talking that she really needed to learn, he gave their location and what he was after and where the speeder was heading.

  Eve had never been in a car chasing another car before.

  It felt weird.

  And exhilarating.

  It would have been scary, but nothing could hurt her. So instead she worried about Cascade.

  But it was clear he was an expert driver. And very comfortable behind the wheel. Maybe that was one of his superpowers. She would have to ask.

  The moment the blue Ford saw Cascade’s flashing lights, it signaled and pulled over, sliding to a stop in the gravel shoulder of the highway.

  “Guy is in a hurry somewhere,” Eve said.

  Cascade pulled in behind him, reporting their position.

  “Give me a moment to check it out,” Eve said.

  She knew that cops walking up to a car were in a lot of danger. So she liked how this could be part of her job with him, and help keep him a little safer in a dangerous job.

  She went out through the door and up to the driver’s side. What she saw through the driver’s window shocked her for a moment.

  The guy was a young man, sweating, and clearly scared, his eyes round and his breathing rushed. And slouched down in the passenger seat beside him was a very pregnant wife who was also sweating and shouting in pain. The woman’s black hair looked like it was glued to her head.

  From the way she was sitting with her legs splayed open and her nightshirt up, she looked to be about to pop a kid right onto the floor mat.

  “Shit, just shit!” Eve said and waved for Cascade to hurry.

  He got out of the patrol car, walked at a fast pace up beside Eve.

  He took one look at the scene and said to the driver. “Can she make it?”

  Oh, shit. Eve couldn’t help deliver a baby. She was a ghost and wouldn’t have a clue what to do anyway.

  “I think so,” the guy said, glancing at the woman.

  “Hurry!” the woman shouted and then screamed in pain.

  Eve at that moment was counting her lucky stars she had never been pregnant. That did not look like fun in the slightest.

  “Stay on my bumper all the way.”

  “Thank you, officer,” the young, soon-to-be-father said.

  Cascade and Eve both ran back to the patrol car and with lights flashing and sirens cutting through the morning air, Cascade pulled out and the blue Ford did the same, staying right with Cascade as he drove and reported in what was happening, alerting the hospital to stand ready.

  Six minutes later at the closest hospital, the blue Ford was met with a doctor, a couple nurses, and a stretcher. The almost-mother was rushed inside.

  From what Eve could tell, they made it with minutes to spare. That kid really wanted to be born.

  Cascade smiled at Eve as they climbed back into the cruiser. “Now that’s the kind of thing I wish would happen more often.”

  “Nice way to start my first day on the job,” Eve said, taking a deep breath and relaxing. Just helping a couple get to the hospital had stressed her.

  But it was a great way to start the day.

  She felt great. And right at that moment she knew she was going to like this job for far more reasons than just being with a hunk of a superhero.

  Although, that sure didn’t hurt.

  ELEVEN

  CASCADE REALLY LIKED the fact that Eve had been able to go up and take a look at the situation in a stopped car. Not only had it saved time today and got a woman in labor to a hospital on time, but Cascade had no doubt her doing that might save his life at some point.

  And they had never talked about her doing that. She had just offered to do it automatically.

  They were already working as a team and he really liked that more than he wanted to admit.

  And that got him thinking about other ways they could work together. He had to get used to the fact that he was the real world side and that she could see and do things he could never see or do.

  He could actually arrest someone, but she could read the person’s thoughts and find out intent and so much more.

  After just one event on their first morning, he now felt even better and actually excited about working with Eve.

  The rest of the morning was uneventful and they stopped for lunch at a Denny’s Restaurant. Cascade kept his microphone on his head and she sat across from him so they could talk like a normal couple.

  He liked that more than he wanted to admit, actually.

  He ordered a French Dip and fries, which had sounded good to her as well, so when it came, she just took the ghost component of his meal. Before she took it, they did an experiment. He took a fry and tasted it, then she took the ghost components of everything and he tasted another fry.

  The same taste. What she took didn’t seem to bother at all what he was eating.

  At lunch he told her how he had gone to college, had two degrees, then served four years in the Marines, seeing minor combat in the last stages of the Iraq war. Then he had gone through the police academy and discovered he was really, really good at everything to do with law enforcement.

  At one point he asked her why she didn’t actually know all of this already since she had been in his mind so much.

  “Not surface,” she had said. “And I respect your privacy so I never went digging.

  And since he could be in her head when she was
touching him, he did the same thing. So even though they knew each other’s thoughts when touching, they were going to take time, like a regular couple, to learn all the deeper stuff.

  And he liked that more than he wanted to admit.

  “So is when you joined the force that you were recruited to be a superhero?” Eve asked.

  He nodded, finishing off his last fry. “I still don’t know much about this superhero business, but I’m learning.”

  “So we can both learn together,” she said, laughing.

  “I like that idea a lot,” he said.

  And he did.

  TWELVE

  EVE REALLY HAD enjoyed their lunch. She wanted to learn everything about Cascade without digging into his mind, even though she now knew how to do that easily. But for the time, with him, she would stay on the surface, and she knew he was doing the same with her when inside her head.

  That showed that not only did they both care for each other, they both respected each other.

  She couldn’t remember if she had ever had a boyfriend who respected her in any fashion at all.

  After lunch, they headed back out on patrol and thirty minutes later were working along a winding two-lane paved road that stayed next to a river and connected two of the smaller towns outside of Portland.

  It seemed that Deputy Sheriff Cascade’s territory to patrol was very, very large. The county was underfunded and thus the sheriff’s department understaffed. Every day on patrol they were going to cover a lot of territory, much of it Eve had never seen before.

  As they came around a corner, Eve spotting an old white panel van tucked up in the pine trees on her side. Something about it gave her a chill and she mentioned that to Cascade.

  “Let’s take a look,” he said, frowning. “One thing I have been learning to trust is that gut-sense about things. Seems to come from somewhere.”

  He reported in where they were, what he was investigating, and then pulled up the small dirt road off the pavement and parked a distance behind the van.