by Kay Hooper
So Hollis wasn’t really surprised when, no more than ten minutes later, DeMarco knocked on the connecting door between his room and hers.
She opened her side, saying immediately, “I’ve been trying to decide whether to unpack. I hate living out of a suitcase. Then again, I’m hoping we won’t be here long enough for it to matter.” She added a muttered, “And I probably just jinxed us.”
DeMarco had shed his jacket and the shoulder harness for his gun, and that plus his carelessly rolled-up sleeves made him look very casual.
The look in his very intent blue eyes, however, was anything but casual. He might not have a tell, and Hollis might not be a telepath, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t gotten fairly good at reading her partner.
He, of course, had an edge.
“Is it a full-blown migraine yet?” he asked her, stepping into her room as she went to frown at the suitcase open on her bed.
Damned telepaths.
“It’s just a little headache,” she told him. “Are you reading me, or does it just show?”
“It shows. You’re more pale than normal, you’re holding yourself stiffly, and the light is obviously bothering your eyes.”
“I didn’t ask for a detailed summation.”
When only silence greeted that, Hollis turned her attention away from her luggage and sat down near it on the bed with a sigh.
“Sorry.” She looked at him, noting that he had come only a few steps into her room. “I’m just a little tense, that’s all.”
“You haven’t been sleeping well.”
Hollis frowned. “I haven’t had a chance to sleep here.”
“I mean over the last few months. And especially the last few weeks.” He stood with his hands in the front pockets of his jeans, a man clearly prepared to remain right there, immovable as a granite boulder, until he got his answers.
Maybe all his answers.
“Have you been picking up my dreams?” she demanded.
“Yes.” The reply was simple and calm.
She had been hoping for a different response, so Hollis didn’t quite know what to do with that. She had only recently begun to remember her dreams—nightmares—and it horrified her that he might have shared those agonizing experiences. She could feel herself stiffen even more. She fought the urge to start chewing on a thumbnail. “That’s an invasion of privacy,” she muttered.
“I didn’t go looking for your dreams, Hollis.”
She thought that was probably true, but she also thought it was worse. Apparently, her shiny new shield did desert her when she slept. Or maybe . . . maybe he had always been able to see her nightmares, at least since they’d been partners.
The shield was new. Broadcasting like a damned cell tower had been the rule before that. And just because she hadn’t remembered her nightmares then most certainly didn’t mean she hadn’t been experiencing them just about every night.
Oh, God.
“Why are you telling me this?” she asked finally, admitting some truths, however unwillingly. “I mean, it’s not like I can stop you. We both know my shield is iffy at best when I’m awake. I’m sure it’s totally down when I’m sleeping.”
“It is,” he said.
The confirmation wasn’t welcome. At all. Grim, she said, “I’ll have to work on that.”
“You don’t ever need to hide yourself from me. Any part of yourself.”
Hollis shied away from that subject completely. She wasn’t ready for this. She had thought she was, but . . . but she just wasn’t. It was too much right now.
Maybe just too much at all. Ever.
That cost her a pang she didn’t want to acknowledge.
“Listen, it’s late, I’m tired, and I need to swallow half a dozen aspirin before I try to sleep. And I need to sleep. We’re getting an early start tomorrow, remember?”
“We both know you’re not going to sleep. You’ll lie awake in bed going over and over this case in your mind. Trying to figure out if you missed something.”
“It’s my job, Reese. To keep this monster from killing anyone else.”
“That isn’t your job. Your job is to investigate, build a profile, and narrow down what’s now a wide-open list of suspects. To hunt the monster. Our job is to do that. And if he kills again while we’re closing in on him, that’s on him. Not us.”
“Words. They don’t mean a whole lot when somebody dies.”
A slight frown made him look nearly as dangerous as he actually was. “We do the best we can, always. That’s all we can do, and you know it as well as if not better than most. So what’s really bothering you?”
Damned telepaths.
“You mean you don’t know?” She meant it to sound mocking but was pretty sure it missed the mark.
She was prickly as hell, and DeMarco had the strong sense that he was picking his way through a minefield. One wrong question, one wrong step, and he could lose everything.
He kept his voice steady, as dispassionate as he could make it. “I see two possibilities. You can tell me which is right. Either you’ve seen or sensed something you can’t quite put your finger on, or you do know what’s bothering you and simply choose not to share.”
Hollis wondered how he managed to make that last bit an accusation without actually accusing her.
“Hollis?”
“I don’t know what’s bothering me,” she said finally.
“But something is.”
“Wouldn’t take a telepath to see that, I guess.”
He ignored that statement. “You weren’t bothered before we got here to Clarity, right?”
“Right.” Just restless and ready to work, but he’d known that.
“When did you first begin feeling uneasy?”
“When do you think?” she challenged.
DeMarco answered immediately. “When we reached the Cross home.”
Damned telepaths. She thought it was becoming her personal mantra.
She managed a shrug. “Whatever is bothering me, I can’t get a fix on it. I told you about that flash I got, about some impossible creature of the night crouching on a roof. Looking for something. Waiting for something. Or maybe it wasn’t that at all. Maybe whatever’s bugging me was something I actually saw but didn’t really take in at the time, something somebody said . . . Hell, maybe something I heard or smelled, I don’t know.”
“Maybe information a spirit offered?”
Hollis frowned. “What I said up in that attic and later was the truth. I caught a few glimpses, but no spirit stepped forward to offer anything at all.”
“Were the spirits hanging back because they had nothing to say, or because they were hiding from something dark or evil in that house? It’s been the latter at least once.”
Her frown deepened, and then Hollis shook her head. “I didn’t get the sense of any negative spiritual energy, nothing preventing them from speaking or coming out of the shadows. It didn’t strike me as a haunted house, just one where a lot of people have lived and died, and where a few decided to stick around. I don’t think they have any intention of interacting with the living, including mediums. And from all we’ve been told about the family, I doubt any of them were aware of spirits on any level.”
“Okay. Not spirits. And yet you’re bothered.”
She drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Yeah, but whatever it might be is beyond my reach, at least for now. Maybe tomorrow, when we get a timeline up, and can study the victims, the other crime scenes, when we have the autopsy on Mrs. Cross . . . maybe then I’ll know. Until then, all I can really do is stop trying to force it and just wait until it . . . floats to the surface.”
“Sensible,” he noted. “But not really you.”
“And you know me so well,” she muttered.
“Yes,” he said. “I think I do.”
&
nbsp; A very painful memory surfaced before Hollis could do anything to stop it.
“Yes,” he said. “I do understand. I understand that you’ve survived more horror and agony than any human being should ever have to bear. I wish I could take away the pain, at least. But, Hollis, everything that’s happened to you has made you the woman you are today, right now. The bad as well as the good. You know that.”
“I know . . . I didn’t want to remember. I didn’t want to think about the monster who took my eyes. But when I saw her—her face. When I saw her eyes were gone, I remembered.” She drew a sudden, deep breath, and her eyes began to lighten.
And fill with tears.
DeMarco didn’t hesitate. He stepped closer and pulled her into his arms. She was stiff for just a moment, resisting. And then her new walls came down, and her arms went around him.
That memory was so vivid in her mind that for a moment it took her breath away. Vulnerable. God, she hated feeling vulnerable. Feeling helpless. Out of control. Even with Reese.
Maybe especially with Reese.
The monster who had destroyed her old life and put her feet on the path of a totally different one had also done that to her, had taken her to hell and left her so broken, so hurt in ways she didn’t want to think about, to remember. He hurt her and left her to die, but she had survived.
Survived to be a damaged freak with abilities that would always set her apart from normal people.
“Hey.” DeMarco snagged the chair from the little desk in her room and placed it in front of her, sitting in it and leaning toward her, elbows on his knees, eyes still very intent. “What is this?”
She wondered fleetingly why he hadn’t joined her on the bed, but then remembered that her suitcase was open and taking up a lot of space. Stupid. Damn, I can’t even concentrate.
“Hollis, what is this?”
“Nothing,” she managed.
Blunt, he said, “Why are you feeling like a freak? I thought you’d gotten past that a long time ago. Before we ever met.”
“I guess I haven’t. And stop reading me.”
He ignored that last, almost desperate command. “What is it that’s making you doubt yourself?”
Hollis didn’t want to admit it even to herself, but that was the problem, this sudden sense of self-doubt. She had tried to think like a profiler earlier, to do what she was trained to do, and yet it seemed to her that the others had done most of that work, that her own mind just hadn’t . . . worked properly somehow.
And she had no idea why.
She cast about for something to say, and finally said, “I don’t think I should be a team leader. Not yet. I don’t think I’m ready.”
“You’ve been doing fine,” DeMarco said.
“Yeah, well, nothing’s happened yet to . . . challenge me.” She looked down at the hands knotted in her lap, absently noting that she had been picking at the cuticle of her thumbnail without being aware of it, a sure sign of stress.
“Bishop wouldn’t have made you team leader if he hadn’t known you could handle it,” he reminded her.
Hollis heard herself say, “Maybe he thought what I did. That it wouldn’t really matter. I thought at the briefing that it would be a good case for me to try my wings as team leader. A series of bizarre accidents, that’s all. No serial killer, no monster, no evil psychic trying to get into my head. Just a simple investigation.”
“When was the last time the SCU was involved in a simple investigation?”
“Don’t rub it in,” she muttered.
DeMarco reached over and grasped her hand, pulling it gently down to her lap and continuing to hold it.
Hollis hadn’t even realized she’d been chewing on her thumbnail again. Dammit. She stared down at his very large, very strong hand covering hers.
No wonder he carries such a big gun. My Glock would look ridiculous in his hand.
Slowly, DeMarco said, “When Diana was in the hospital fighting to survive, when we didn’t know whether she’d make it, I told you I never wanted to be in the position Quentin was in, sitting at her bedside afraid she was dying, knowing that between them there were too many things left unsaid. Because bad things happen, and for us, in this work, they happen suddenly and usually without any warning. A simple investigation becomes something a lot more complicated. A lot more dangerous. And before we can even get our bearings, time runs out.”
—
HE WASN’T ENTIRELY sure he had reestablished the necessary control over Joe Cross, but he wasn’t all that troubled by it; the very weak man was so overcome by grief that it occupied his whole mind, at least for now, allowing nothing else in. Not even guilt. Not even knowing. But it was waiting for him, the knowing, hovering nearby and waiting for eyes not clouded by tears and a mind not racked by grief.
And in the meantime, poor, weak Joe posed no problem to either him or his plans. Grieving so violently and surrounded by Perla Ferguson Cross’s very protective family. The sheriff and the feds would probably go to interview him, and he’d be useless, worse than useless. They’d get no sense out of him.
Joe was no threat for now. He might have broken completely, and if so he’d never be a threat. But if he hadn’t broken, if he became a threat, well, the plan was in place for that. A very good plan, he thought.
Suicide by cop was such a common way for a cowardly killer to end what he fancied was his own suffering, and in the dramatic style of Hollywood.
A nice, clean wrapping up of loose ends.
A nice, clean ending, when he was ready for that. And it might be a challenge, now that he thought about it, to use Joe that last time even though he was broken. It might just be . . .
However, in the meantime, he had work to do. Much work. And a very large part of that work was to make certain that she didn’t become aware of his plans.
He thought she’d almost sensed him once, and though the impression he received before hastily shoring up his shields had been a confusing one, he was reasonably sure she had seen him as some kind of monster.
A monster.
Perhaps not surprising, since she hunted monsters. Maybe she always saw her opponent in that light. It probably made it easier for her, he thought. Such a nice, clear, black-and-white concept. No shades of gray, no real doubt. Everything cut-and-dried, with so little need to question. He thought he was probably right about that, even though all he could really sense of her was her power.
But black-and-white concepts. Good versus evil. Heroes versus . . . monsters. Evil monsters, he supposed.
He shrugged all that off for now. Bowed his head for a short but reverent prayer. Then opened the large, very thick, very old book laid out on the altar.
There was so much to do . . .
—
HOLLIS MET HIS gaze finally. “That was more than a year ago. When Diana was in the hospital. When we talked like that, I mean.” She wasn’t even sure whether that was simply a statement—or a complaint.
He nodded slowly, his gaze never leaving hers. “I wanted you to know how I felt, but I also wanted you to know I wouldn’t push, wouldn’t insist, wouldn’t pressure you for anything. Wouldn’t even ask how you felt about us. About me. Because we both have baggage, and yours bothered you very much. Still does. For a lot of reasons, but mostly because you had no shield, and so felt you had no private place to retreat to if anybody got . . . too close.
“But you have that now, Hollis. That shield. It may not be as strong yet as it will be eventually, but it’s there.”
“Then why do I feel like one giant exposed nerve?” she asked without at all meaning to.
“Because it’s still new. Still something you can’t control, can’t trust.”
“Georgia was six months ago,” she reminded him. “Every other . . . ability . . . I’ve developed has been pretty much full strength right away. I mean, after the first
one, when I finally accepted the fact that I was a psychic, a medium.”
His fingers tightened around hers, and he spoke slowly, carefully. “Maybe that’s why you can’t trust your shield yet. Becoming a medium and developing a shield both came from the same source, Hollis. A horrific attack made you a medium; facing the memories of that attack fully and consciously for the first time created a shield because your mind still needed to try to protect itself from the shock.”
“Still.”
DeMarco nodded. “Even years later, you want to bury that attack deep and never have to think about it again. The mind is a wonderful guardian, trying always to protect us from whatever hurts the worst. But for you, the attack that changed your life is something you have to remember, have to accept.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s where your shield comes from,” he repeated. “And because what happened to you made you who you are today. Hollis, I know you still grieve for the woman who had no experience of violence. For the artist who only wanted to create beauty. For the person who had a . . . a simple life, without monsters.”
“She’s gone,” Hollis said starkly. “She’s gone, and she’s never coming back. She’ll never live a normal life. She’ll never have kids, or a boring job, or a husband who snores beside her in bed at night. She’ll never live the life she expected to live.”
“Very few of us do that,” DeMarco said. “Live the life we expect to. That’s a . . . storybook dream, what we expect when we’re young and arrogant and haven’t seen much of the world. The remnants of childhood hopes and aspirations. Then life happens. We turn left instead of right, make this decision instead of that one, choose one thing over another, and get hurt in ways we could never have imagined when we were so young and had never been hurt. And suddenly we’re on a different path, in a different life, one we never expected to be living.”
“And can’t go back.”
“No. But would you really want to, Hollis? Now, knowing what you know about how much bigger the world really is, having the abilities you have, being able to do extraordinary things, to make a real difference, would you really, consciously choose that ordinary life? You’ve helped save lives. Without you, Diana would probably be dead. And Miranda. And who knows how many others are alive today because you helped cage or destroy so many monsters.”