Fear the Dark

by Kay Hooper

  Samantha looked at him steadily for a moment, then said, “And can you?”

  Jonah gave her a look. “Why, because we have the same blood type? Jesus.”

  “No. Because you’re a latent empath—and you gave her some of your blood.”

  Lucas said to his wife, “It’s a stretch.”

  “Maybe not. Maybe not if I help.”

  Jonah could see Lucas stiffen a bit, but the other man’s voice was calm. “You’ve never tried that before. As far as I know, no one has tried that before.”

  “That’s why we practice in the field, according to Bishop. Trying things we’ve never done before. And the blood type being so rare, plus Jonah’s latent abilities, makes this something unique.”

  Lucas was silent, frowning.

  “Have you been able to sense any of them?” Samantha asked, clearly knowing the answer.

  “No,” Luke replied, still frowning. “I don’t know if it’s the energy he doesn’t really control or what, but every time I’ve tried, all I’ve heard in my head was something like static. And I haven’t felt anything at all.”

  “Then we need to try something else.” Samantha sighed. “Look, we’ve still got a day’s work or more going through files trying to figure out why these people, indebted to Jonah for their lives, are now targets apparently because of it, since that’s the only similarity we’ve found. We don’t have any clues. We don’t have anything to send us in the right direction, unless we can somehow find out where Nessa’s being held.”

  “The somehow meaning me?” Jonah asked warily.

  Sam gestured over her shoulder to a table against the wall, where boxes held the personal effects of some of the missing people. “I can touch that. All of it, probably. And maybe, maybe I’ll catch a glimpse of something useful. But as far as we know, he didn’t touch any of the missing people then. Not when and where he abducted them.”

  “The energy bubbles,” Jonah protested.

  “Were probably excess energy from when he was initially establishing control over them psychically. That’s why there was so much of it, why so much of it was diffused. Even why it seems to be blocking Luke. Whoever this guy is, he’s powerful, but I think we’re right in believing he isn’t in control of his abilities. He’s leaving too much around him whenever he uses them. For now, at least. But the more time that passes, the more likely it is that he’ll learn better control, better focus. And once that happens, we might end up facing a weapon we can’t fight.”

  “Which makes it even more dangerous, Sam. He’s touched Nessa’s mind, controlled her. If he senses you’re trying to make contact through Jonah, he could try to kill you both.”

  “Then what, Luke? Spend the day trying to figure out why it’s important that these particular people whose lives Jonah saved are so important? I’m willing to bet he could add others to that list, other lives he’s saved.” She looked at Jonah fiercely. “Couldn’t you?”

  “I guess. Probably. I’m a cop.” It was, really, the first time Jonah had seen the intensity lurking beneath Samantha’s seemingly quiet, urchinlike exterior, and now he had a fair idea of how these two matched so well.

  “Then there are more potential victims, Luke. He abducted Nessa yesterday. He murdered Annie Duncan last night. He has five other people he’s probably holding captive. I say any shortcut we can try that might lead us to this bastard is worth taking.” She looked at Jonah, again fiercely. “How about you?”

  “Yeah. Of course.” He had no idea what he’d just agreed to but had a hunch it was not going to be pleasant.

  Thunder rumbled distantly.

  “Shit,” Jonah said. “If we get another gully washer, even knowing which way to head in looking for them might leave us with nothing but a simple direction.”

  “Then we don’t have any time to waste.” Sam got up and came to stand behind Jonah—who felt profoundly uneasy.

  “Uh—”

  “Don’t worry,” Luke said as he got up and stood near his wife, presumably to catch her if she collapsed again. “If this thing works at all, you’ll be a conduit. Best case, you might get some idea of where Nessa is being held, and maybe a mild headache.”

  “And worst case?”

  “You’ll feel at least some of what she’s feeling.”

  “Oh, great,” he muttered.

  Sam was briskly matter-of-fact. “Close your eyes, Jonah. And think about Nessa.”

  “Think about her how?”

  “Think of her riding horses, carrying her schoolbooks, standing in that kitchen while some monster took hold of her mind. Make her come alive in your mind.”

  Jonah had no idea if he could do it, but he closed his eyes and thought about Nessa. He had a lot of memories of her, now that he allowed himself to think of them.

  Nessa on a pony and then a horse. Nessa grinning at him and waving when he passed by in his Jeep. Lying so still and white and silent in the hospital bed while his blood helped her hold on to life. That chilling video of her in her kitchen, moving like some remote-controlled doll to do the bidding of another.

  Nessa . . .

  “My feet are cold,” Jonah said.

  —

  HER FEET WERE cold. She was a little surprised she could feel anything, because she thought they were numb. She’d looked down at them once only to look hastily away, because there were scratches from thorns and sticks, most of them bleeding, and one split toenail where she’d tripped on a root.

  A root. They always gave her trouble. Always.

  She knew the only reason her feet weren’t hurting horribly was because they were cold and mostly numb. But the coldness made it harder for her to feel the sharp edge of a stone, or briars, or everything else that could injure the bare feet of a little girl.

  It was growing darker as the storm neared, but Nessa was doing her best. She had a sharp stone in her hand, and every few yards, she dug a short scratch in a tree trunk, just barely visible. She did it for two reasons: because she hoped it would keep her from walking in a circle as she’d read lost people often did, and because she hoped it would help Chief Riggs and his people find where the others were being held.

  She knew it was a risk. If that snake thing, if he followed her and saw the marks, then he could catch up to her. She was sure he could travel faster than she could. So she tried to move faster, but paused to dig into a tree with the rock, her fingers hurting, her feet cold and stinging from the thorns and sticks and hard, cold ground . . .

  —

  “WHERE IS SHE, Jonah?” Sam asked calmly. She was holding one hand on each side of his head, a few inches from him, and her eyes were closed.

  “Don’t know. Woods. Woods all around. My feet are cold. I can hear it thundering, louder now. I’m afraid . . . he might be somewhere behind me . . . but I have to . . . mark the trees. Like Chief Riggs taught us to do. A sharp stone. A slash across the bark. Not deep enough to hurt the tree. Just deep enough to see so we don’t get lost.”

  “Nessa, did you escape?”

  “I knew I could.” Jonah’s voice was oddly his own, and yet there was a musing quality to it. “I don’t know why I didn’t sleep like the others. They’re still back there. In that place that smells of dirt and mushrooms and . . .”

  “And what, Nessa?”

  “. . . and he has needles in their arms, with IV bags. I remember those from the hospital. There was one in my arm too, but I pulled it out. So I could get away. And then . . . I had to be so careful. So quiet. Because I knew he would look for me if he knew I was gone. I found the wall, and kept one hand on it, because I knew I could find my way out like that.”

  “Did you see anything, Nessa?”

  “It’s dark. It’s so dark. I can’t see anything. I can hear the others breathing sometimes, but . . . I can’t see. I can’t help them. Unless I get out. Get away. If I get away, then I ca
n help them. Then I can show people where he kept us.”

  “Nessa—”

  “I’m outside again.”

  “How did you come out? What did the doorway look like?”

  “Not a doorway. Just . . . a hole in the ground. I think I’ve walked for miles and miles. But I haven’t, of course, I know that. Only I’m so tired. And the storm is coming. I still don’t see anything that looks familiar. Except . . . there’s a rock, taller than I am. And I remember people talking about it. Because it looks like it should fall over and it never does.”

  “Nessa,” Jonah said suddenly. “Can you hear me?”

  “I can hear you in my head. Why can I do that, Chief Riggs?”

  “We’ll talk about it later. Nessa, just beyond the funny rock there are two different paths. Do you see them?”

  “Um . . . yeah. One’s clearer than the other. I can hardly see the other.”

  “That’s the trail you have to take.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Just get on that trail and keep walking, Nessa. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  “Oh—okay, Chief Riggs.”

  Lucas had heard only one side of that last bit of conversation, when Jonah spoke. But he watched Sam’s lips move whenever Nessa answered.

  Sam stepped to one side as Jonah rose, and she seemed more grateful than anything else that Luke’s arm was around her.

  “Wow,” she said. “That was different.”

  Jonah shook his head the way a man did when he was dismissing something for the moment. “It’s not a mild headache, just so you know. I have to go after Nessa. If she’s where I hope she is, I can get there in less than thirty minutes. I’ll grab a couple of my officers who ride; Clyde stables a few horses several blocks back from his diner. You two stay here.”

  “What about the captor?” Lucas asked.

  “Nessa may be able to help us find him. If not, the marks I taught her to make on trees should at least get us near there. No matter how hard it rains, it won’t wash away those marks.”

  Luke eased Sam down into the closest chair as Jonah hurried from the building.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Seem to be. Not even tired, really.” She looked at him as Luke sat beside her, and said, “Okay, so I’m a little tired. And I have a mild headache. But that was . . . wild. Luke, you still couldn’t sense Nessa, could you? Even after I made contact through Jonah.”

  “Not so much as a twinge.”

  “That’s what I thought. And I know why. It’s not our unsub blocking you. I’m not sure if she learned it on her own or somebody taught her to, but Nessa knows how to overlay a still, calm surface on her mind. Like one of our shields, but completely organic and natural to her. You couldn’t sense her fear or pain because it was underneath that surface.”

  “Jonah could feel it,” Luke objected. “He said her feet were cold.”

  “But he didn’t feel that. He was just reporting what she was thinking. That was the only thing she would allow out. Just thoughts, not feelings.”

  “Then how was Jonah—how were you both, I guess—able to home in on her like that?”

  “Jonah was the one sensing where she was, and I really think it was that blood connection. Maybe just because it’s such an incredibly rare type of blood, and only the two of them have it here. We’ve always thought of our blood as simply the blood we were born with, nothing more. But now . . . I think maybe Bishop is going to have to add a few new suggestions for the scientists to study.”

  “But you’re sure you’re all right?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine.” She frowned as they heard thunder again. “I’m really hoping we don’t get a nasty storm, though. It’ll be hard to see even slashes on trees if the rain is falling hard enough.”

  Luke got up and headed for one of the computer stations. “I’m going to check the weather. And then I’m going to have one of the analysts really dig into the backgrounds of these six people. And Jonah’s as well.”

  “Oh, he’s not going to like that.”

  “He will if we can point him to the unsub.”

  “Especially before dark. What time is it, anyway?”

  “A bit after three,” Lucas said, glancing at the clock on the computer’s toolbar.

  “Does it feel to you like we’ve been here a week?”

  “At least. Hmmm. Storm’s all around us, but I’m not sure if we’ll actually get wet.”

  “We’ll hope it stays away at least until Jonah finds Nessa.”

  Lucas looked over at her curiously. “You’re certain he will.”

  “Yeah. Those two are connected. I have no idea if either will decide to use the connection, or even explore it. The difference in their ages is going to keep Jonah at more than arm’s length, and I’m not sure Nessa wants to be . . . different . . . from her friends. She’s at that age.”

  Luke nodded, then returned his attention to the computer screen. “You covered the camera with tape again, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. We know hackers can remote-activate those cameras. I don’t like not knowing if someone is watching.”

  Lucas sighed but didn’t remove the tape from the computer’s camera. Instead, he talked to the technical analyst he could see, rapidly giving him all the names and information he had on the missing people—and on Jonah.

  “You want everything I can dig up?” the tech asked.

  “Everything. On every one of them.”

  “Gotcha. I’ll be back when I have something.”

  Luke turned in his chair to find Samantha wandering around the room. Except that the wandering looked like pacing. “What is it?”

  “I’m not sure. I just have a bad feeling.”

  “Nessa?”

  “No, actually. I think Jonah is going to find her, and that she’ll be in pretty good shape, all things considered.”

  “Then, what?”

  “This thing started long before we got here. And it’s pretty obvious that whoever this unsub is, he has a connection to Jonah. Or to one of the people Jonah saved. It just doesn’t make sense any other way.”

  “Okay. So?”

  “He tried to get in my head—we think—and failed. He got into Robbie’s head and mixed up her memories. He got into Sarah’s head and gave her new memories.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  “To test us maybe?”

  “Well . . . granted we’ve barely been here twenty-four hours, hard as that is to believe, but a lot has happened. If he’s testing anybody, I’d think it was Jonah. Now, maybe he doesn’t know Jonah is a latent; you have to be a pretty strong psychic yourself to pick up latents. Maybe he was probing us to find out if he could use any of us to . . . hurt Jonah.”

  “You think that’s the point of this? To hurt Jonah?”

  “To destroy him, more like. We’ve both seen how connected he is to this town. If there’s somebody out there who is convinced—delusional or sane—that Jonah has somehow wronged him, then all this has to be happening for that reason.

  “Did Nessa get away because she was able to—or because he let her? If there is a trail back to where the others were kept, what will we find? Nessa heard them breathing. You haven’t picked up on any fear, so I’m betting he’s keeping them sedated. But not so he can control them. I think he’s keeping them like that because he knows Jonah’s been driving himself into the ground trying to find these people. And when he does find them, the others, I think what he finds will be meant to shock and horrify him.”

  “Torture?”

  “No. Jonah knows this town. These people. I think the unsub wants to torment Jonah with . . . games. If Jonah finds Nessa, and in finding her is able to find the others, then Jonah wins. But it’ll come at a price. The people Jonah cares about are going to be the ones paying the price.”<
br />
  “Then this isn’t over,” Lucas said.

  “I think it’s just beginning,” Samantha said. “At least as far as the unsub’s concerned. And if we don’t stop him . . . I think a lot of people are going to get hurt.”

  —

  DANTE THOUGHT HE might have slept an hour or three. Surely no longer than that, judging by how he felt. He tried to go back to sleep, but things were tickling at the back of his mind, bothering him, and sleep just wouldn’t come. Finally, he got up and showered and shaved. Pulled on a sweatshirt and sweatpants, since he wasn’t supposed to be back on the clock until midnight.

  He was hoping that if he ordered just the right snack from room service, maybe it would help him sleep. Maybe.

  Anything was worth a try.

  He walked into the common area of the two-bedroom suite, surprised to find Robbie standing at one of the windows, looking out.

  “You should be asleep,” he said, adding immediately, “Did I hear it thunder a little while ago?”

  “Yes, you did.”

  She turned to face him, wearing a hotel robe, her hair piled on top of her head as though in preparation for a shower.

  The gun was . . . extra.

  Dante had never had a gun pointed at him like that, not for real, not by somebody he knew whose face was all . . . wrong.

  “Robbie—”

  “Good-bye, Dante.”

  The gun went off with an ungodly roar, Dante felt something like a two-by-four slam into his chest, and then everything went dark.

  SEVENTEEN

  Robbie stumbled back from Dante’s doorway, shocked through to her bones. It took her several minutes to get her heart to slow down, but her hands were still shaking when she examined her gun. It didn’t smell as if it had been fired. She removed the clip and found it full of ammo. Chamber empty.

  She wanted to put the gun back in its holster but held it just in case as she slowly eased open the door of Dante’s bedroom.

  He was sound asleep. Snoring. Clearly one of those restless sleepers, he was sprawled across the bed diagonally with the covers bunched oddly here and there but decently covering him.