by Kay Hooper
“So the shielded ones tend to not be church members. And seemingly aren’t affected, or aren’t much affected, by whatever is affecting everybody else.”
“That could be why,” Bailey offered. “Samuel can’t get to them, can’t influence them, not by psychic means and not by more conventional . . . cultish means. But, if my casual walk through town is any indication, you’re looking at only a small percentage of the town being . . . immune to Samuel.”
“Which,” Bishop said grimly, “argues an enormous amount of sheer energy expended. That has to be taking a toll.”
“Worth the price, maybe, to him. It allows him to operate without worry. No stories in the newspaper or other media attention. Nobody questioning his people. Nobody bothering them.” She paused, then added, “On the other hand, it might not be so deliberate. Those sensors we have in place now are showing an awful lot of random energy we can’t really explain, and not just inside the Compound. If he’s expending enough of it, leaving enough residue in the very air, it could be acting as a sort of dampening field over the whole area, including outside the Compound. Affecting anyone who’s susceptible to electrical or magnetic energy.”
“Affecting us,” Bishop said. “In unpredictable ways.”
She tilted her head slightly as she studied him. “Adding Tessa’s experience to Sarah’s, plus other reports, means this isn’t exactly new information.”
Answering the unspoken question, Bishop said slowly, “I’ve always believed an absolute psychic would be born. Eventually. Someday. A psychic born able to control his or her abilities completely.”
“A good thing. Unless he or she is on the other team.”
“That possibility dawned as we discovered, over time, more and more psychics on the other team,” he admitted.
“Okay. Do you believe Samuel is an absolute psychic?”
“I’m afraid he might be.”
Bailey waited a moment, then probed, “And?”
“And everything I know about profiling, all my experience, tells me that he might have been made, not born. Shaped by events in his life. Created.”
“And?” Bailey repeated.
“We’re born with limitations, Bailey. All of us. Our abilities evolve and change, but they have ultimate limits, even if it takes us years or a lifetime to find them. Something created, on the other hand, something . . . forged in the crucible of experiences may not have those kinds of limits. And the evolution of something like that could be consciously controlled, accelerated by will alone. Samuel could be growing stronger, literally, day by day.”
“Which is why you said this couldn’t go on for weeks or months.”
He nodded. “Yes. We have to stop him.”
“Even without evidence?”
“Even,” Bishop said, “without evidence. And without evidence, we can’t put him in a cage. We can’t deal with him in a courtroom. Without evidence, we have to destroy him.”
Tessa was frowning. “Sarah was a Haven operative, not a fed. And the FBI investigation into the church wasn’t authorized?”
“Not by the Director. He’s . . . not a big fan of the SCU. Or of Bishop. Things have been a little tense since his appointment.”
“Why not a fan? From everything I’ve been told, the SCU has been incredibly successful in their investigations, especially in comparison to some other FBI cases.”
“And it could be that. Bishop bends over backward to avoid publicizing our successes. And if we don’t get credit—”
“—the FBI doesn’t get credit. But does the Director really want to explain that the successes are due to a unit mostly made up of psychic agents?”
“I doubt it. Very much. So you could see how he’d have mixed emotions about us. Whatever other tensions are there, I don’t know. But I know he’s been watching the unit and Bishop very closely.”
A bit dryly, Tessa said, “I doubt that going behind the Director’s back to put agents inside a church would win any brownie points.”
“I never said SCU agents were inside the church,” Hollis said immediately. “Look, Tessa, any suspected cult leader is automatically on the FBI’s watch list, and the SCU’s. Any suspected cult leader with even the possibility of psychic ability and we’d be nuts not to get eyes and ears on the inside, to gauge the danger, ASAP. A psychic cult leader suspected of murder calls for a full-scale investigation.”
“But not an official investigation.”
“If you’re worried about the legalities, Haven is still officially working for Senator LeMott.”
Tessa was shaking her head. “I’m not worried on that account. I know John and Maggie would never send one of us into any situation without legal cover.”
“Then what are you worried about?”
A little laugh escaped Tessa.
Hollis grimaced. “Okay, dumb question. I mean, what’s bugging you about the Haven/SCU connection in all this?”
“I’m just not sure of the boundaries. The limits.”
“What do you mean?”
“We can watch. We can gather information. But we aren’t—none of us is—authorized to actually arrest or even detain anyone.”
“Well, that’s debatable. But not the point. You want to take Chief Cavenaugh into our confidence, don’t you?”
“Why not? He does have the authority, without question or debate, to openly investigate, to detain or arrest, even on suspicion. And he’s certain Samuel and his church are involved in the murders.”
“He’s also about as subtle as neon in his suspicions, according to what you told me.”
“Maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Maybe Samuel and his church need to know someone’s watching.”
Hollis studied the other woman for a beat or two, then said quietly, “All that pain you felt. You believe we need to act quickly. To stop whatever is going on up there.”
“Don’t you?”
“Stop it, yes. As soon as possible, yes. But, Tessa, even with the chief on our side in this, the law isn’t, and Cavenaugh has to follow the law. We have no hard evidence, remember? No proof that Samuel or anyone in his church had anything to do with Sarah’s death, or Ellen Hodges’s death. Or any of the others’.”
“I know that. But at least the chief can ask his questions directly; we’re . . . smiling and pretending.”
“It’s just another way to investigate, and you know it. You also know, I hope, that nobody would blame you if you decided it isn’t a way you want to be involved in this.”
Tessa shifted beneath the other woman’s steady gaze. “I’m not going to bail. It’s just—I guess that dream unsettled me even more than I thought.”
“I’m not surprised. What Samuel is doing, if we’re right about any of this, is about as unnatural as it comes. And whether his motivation is the usual—if more literal—power trip of a cult leader or something more, what we do know without question is that he’s dangerous. And getting more so. Six of the eight known victims in this area died in the last two years—and that doesn’t even begin to count the women killed last summer in Boston, and last October in Venture, hideous murders we’re convinced Samuel was ultimately responsible for.”
“And all we have are questions.”
“It’s not all we have. We suspected he was a murderer. That he was killing with his mind, his abilities, if not with his own hands. This could be why he kills, this apparent need for energy. The hunger you sensed and saw in your dream. This could be one answer, or part of an answer. But it doesn’t change anything. We have to find all the answers, like the critical one of how to stop him. Preferably before anyone else dies.”
That final sentence served to focus Tessa and stiffen her resolve, to remind her of her part in all this. Her job.
“So he gets at least some of what he needs from them, from his followers. The women. He uses his abilities to stimulate them to orgasm and then draws the energy out of them. That’s just . . . so hard to believe.”
“It was your dream,” Hollis
noted.
“I don’t have visions,” Tessa said immediately.
“I don’t think what you had was a vision.”
“You don’t believe what I saw was real?”
“Oh, I believe it was real. I believe it happened exactly as you saw it happen, probably when you saw it happen.”
“How is that possible? I was here. I never pick up impressions at a distance, much less anything that detailed.”
“Remember what I said about our abilities changing?”
Tessa nodded.
“Well, I believe yours have changed. Or are in the process of changing. In this case, at least. You connected to something while you were in that compound. Maybe a person, maybe an energy source—I don’t know. But you made a very real, tangible connection.”
“What makes you believe that?”
Hollis studied the multicolored aura surrounding the other woman, fainter now than it had been when Tessa had awakened her but still glittering here and there, almost sparking, as if with electricity. Not an unusual aura for a psychic, in Hollis’s rather limited and very recent experience. But one thing about it was unusual.
A tendril of energy, shifting, almost writhing, snaked out from the aura, through the kitchen doorway, and disappeared toward the front of the house. And out the front door.
“Call it a hunch,” Hollis said.
“The problem,” Special Agent Quentin Hayes said, “is that it takes so damn long to get anybody inside. And once they are inside, they’re lucky if they can be alone in the john for five minutes. That doesn’t really lend itself to any kind of a thorough recon.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” Bishop said.
Quentin looked up from the map spread out on the conference table and lifted an eyebrow. “Probably can’t do that. But I can tell you one more thing you already know. You shouldn’t be here.”
“I’m covered. The Director’s at a law-enforcement seminar in Paris.”
“I wasn’t talking about the Director.” Quentin straightened, a rare frown crossing his face. “I’m a lot more worried about Senator LeMott.”
Bishop leaned back in his chair at a workstation on the other side of the room and gazed steadily at one of his most trusted primary agents. “Whatever LeMott’s doing, it’s by remote control, through his own operatives. Me riding herd on him in D.C. won’t change a thing.”
“It might give us a shot at identifying his operatives, before they do something reckless and this whole situation goes to hell.”
“We’re a lot more likely to identify them on this end, with the people we have in place. I haven’t been able to get a clear reading on LeMott in weeks, maybe longer.”
Quentin’s frown deepened. “That ever happen to you before? Not being able to read somebody all of a sudden when you started out being able to read them?”
“No.”
“And that doesn’t worry you?”
Bishop sighed. “Of course it worries me. But LeMott wouldn’t be the first nonpsychic I’ve met who learned how to shield his thoughts from a telepath.”
“If he learned to shield his thoughts from you, just over the space of a few weeks, that’s not only rare but unnaturally fast.” “You think he’s had help?”
“Isn’t that more likely? I mean, mad makes a great shield, and mad and crazy with grief can make a stronger one—but he had that last summer, and you could read him then.”
Bishop considered for a moment, then shook his head. “Whether he has help in blocking me isn’t something I can do anything about right now. Things are moving too fast in Grace for any of us to shift our focus. At least two church members murdered in the last two weeks is either a deliberate escalation, a buildup of energy, or else a loss of control signaling something a lot worse.”
“I really don’t want to see this guy get worse,” Quentin said dryly. “Either way.”
“No. But unless we stop him soon, he undoubtedly will get worse. And these new energy readings are confirmation of what some of us have felt for months; now that we can actually measure what’s happening, at least part of the increasing danger is clear.”
“Well, it’s obvious. But I don’t know how clear it is. I’ve never seen anything like this before.”
“Neither have I. But I don’t need to be familiar with it to know that an electromagnetic field fluctuating like this one is as unnatural as it is potentially deadly.”
“Yeah, I got that. It’s one reason I didn’t argue when you asked Diana to stay at Quantico.”
“And I got that,” Bishop murmured.
Quentin cleared his throat and bent once again over the map of the church’s Compound, making rather a production of studying it. It was an unusual map only in that it was extremely detailed and had a clear film overlay on which were numerous cryptic symbols and mathematical formulas. “Okay, so I’ve been a little protective. Sue me.”
“She’ll be fine, Quentin. She’s improving every day, more in command of her abilities, and healing in every way. You were right about how much strength she has.”
“She’s still got a long way to go.”
“She’s nearly completed her formal training.”
“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”
“Fishing?”
“Well, I haven’t seen anything about us. I was hoping you and Miranda might have.”
“Sorry.”
“Sorry you haven’t seen anything? Or sorry you can’t tell me what you’ve seen?”
“The former. We’ve been a bit preoccupied by this investigation, remember? And . . . the visions have been few and far between lately.”
“Ah. I wondered why you wanted me along on this one. Not like you to bring in more than one primary, as a rule. Not from the early stages of the investigation, anyway.”
“Precogs are in short supply, and if there’s anything here to be seen ahead of time, I want that edge.”
“If you and Miranda haven’t seen anything, I’m not likely to.”
“You might.”
“I’m stronger with Diana around,” Quentin pointed out.
“Yes. But she can’t be here; she’s a medium. A very powerful medium. Hollis wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t crystal clear she’s meant to be. For whatever reason.”
“I’m not arguing, not about Diana. But . . . no visions? At all?”
“Not in a while.”
Pushing aside the personal ramifications of his unanswered question, Quentin said, “I really don’t like the sound of that. It’s one thing if some of the rest of us are affected psychically by Samuel or his people—or whoever the hell is generating some of these weird energy fields strong enough to scare away the wildlife—but you and Miranda have been solid and stable for a long time now, no matter what we’ve investigated. If this is affecting you guys . . .”
“We don’t know that it is.” Bishop hesitated, then added, “We don’t know that it isn’t. One reason why I have to be here—and Miranda stays away.”
“And if it turns out part of Samuel’s plan is to eliminate you? To try a little more divide-and-conquer where you and Miranda are concerned? You’re not exactly making it harder for him.”
“Miranda’s shield is holding, and we’ve managed to amplify it recently. I shouldn’t read as psychic; in the lab, our strongest team members couldn’t pick up even my presence.”
“In the lab.”
“Yes.”
“I guess it’s useless to remind you that fieldwork tends to explode a lot of the theories and beliefs we develop in the lab.”
“It’s all we have, Quentin. We have logic, and we have our theories, until experience proves us wrong.”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m afraid of. That experience will prove us wrong this time. Because it so often does. And if it does, it’ll be a little late to adjust our theories.”
“No choice. We have too many people at risk. Besides, if Samuel even knows I’m anywhere nearby . . . Well, let’s just say if he’s t
hat powerful, it wouldn’t make much difference where I was.”
Half under his breath, Quentin muttered, “This just keeps getting better and better.”
“We have good people on our side, Quentin.”
“We have too many rookies. At best, they get distracted from the job, from the mission, the way Sarah did. At worst, they can be an active liability.”
“Sarah did what she thought was right.”
“I know. And I don’t blame her for it. Hell, I might have done the same thing. But it cost her her life. And it cost us a valuable set of senses on the inside.”
“I know.”
Quentin shot his boss a sharp glance. Then he sighed. “I know you know. Look, I like Tessa, I really do, but she’s under a hell of a lot of pressure, and I’m not at all sure she won’t buckle.”
“Tessa will do her best. Which is all any of us can do. And Hollis is with her.”
Quentin finally stopped pretending to study the map. He straightened and cocked an eyebrow once again. “Sort of had to reconfigure your plan when she showed up, didn’t you?”
“It was . . . unexpected,” Bishop allowed.
“A sign from the universe? A not-so-gentle nudge to remind you that whatever you know or think you know, none of us is really in control of our destiny?”
“Maybe. But after Venture I didn’t need the reminder, believe me. I’m taking nothing for granted, not this time. We’ve already paid too high a price.”
After a moment, Quentin looked down at the map again and said slowly, “Judging by all this . . . I’m thinking the cost so far may turn out to be only a down payment.”
Nine
TESSA HADN’T PLANNED on returning to the Compound so soon, but when Ruth “just thought I’d stop by” on Thursday morning to check on her, Tessa allowed herself to be convinced to pay a second visit to the church later that day.
Hollis emerged as soon as the visitor had gone, saying, “I’m not sure going back so soon is a good idea, Tessa.”
“Why not?”