Hostage

by Kay Hooper

  “To the SCU, and, yes, because traditional means of interrogation had netted them exactly nothing. Normally, we would have gone to him for the interview, but he was being transferred near here because he’d been making noises about trading the location of the money for a reduced sentence and better accommodations. Nobody really wanted to make that deal, but judging by the security video evidence and as far as we could otherwise determine, Jacoby hadn’t worked with a partner who might have talked, assuming we were able to locate him or her. The investigation into the robbery had turned up zip for leads, so he was and is still our only link to the money.”

  Bothered, Maggie said, “If he could manipulate someone else’s mind, I’m surprised he didn’t try it sooner.”

  “He may have tried,” Bishop reminded her. “And failed. Or succeeded in some way we haven’t discovered yet. That may well have been the way he was able to choose the right bank on the right day. And that could have been his first measurable success. We have no way of knowing for sure. If there’s anything our experiences have taught us, it’s that even with training and practice many of us can control our abilities only erratically.”

  Practically, John said, “Or maybe he just bided his time and used what leverage he had to manipulate the situation until the odds were more in his favor; he was alone with only a couple of agents and had a better chance of escaping.”

  “Maybe so,” Bishop agreed. “In any case, he escaped. He didn’t make the Ten Most Wanted list because he’s not believed to be a violent criminal, but recapturing him could go a long way toward promoting an agent stuck in a backwater field office.”

  “Which,” John said, “explains why Nash called us instead of the SCU. We don’t need or want the public credit for that sort of success, but if another agent or unit within the FBI did the work, it would certainly be known inside the bureau.”

  “Yes,” Bishop said.

  Maggie said, “And since you’ve been your usual secretive self, it wouldn’t be in any of the reports or alerts that you suspected Jacoby of being psychic.”

  Dryly, Bishop said, “I generally keep suspicion of possible psychic activity out of reports unless and until I’m certain. And sometimes even then. There are, after all, still some in—and out of—the bureau who refer to us as the Spooky Crimes Unit.”

  “You knew it’d be an uphill battle for respect,” John reminded him with a trace of amusement.

  “Yeah. And a long one. In any case, the case paperwork on Nash, the reports and stats on his crimes and on him as an escaped felon, contain nothing indicating any interest from the SCU.”

  “Yet you have an agent in Tennessee.”

  “We had reason to believe he’d head in that direction.”

  “Before he escaped?” Maggie asked curiously.

  “When he escaped. Almost immediately,” Bishop replied, unusually forthcoming with information. Maggie frowned slightly.

  “He headed into a wilderness,” John reminded, in the patient tone of one accustomed to dealing with the SCU’s infamously enigmatic chief. “Into a state our information has him with absolutely no connection to. No family, no friends, no past job, nothing. Far as any discoverable records go, he never set foot in the state before. And you managed to place an agent close to where he’d eventually settle?”

  “Within five miles, I believe. Possibly even closer. And we’re reasonably sure he’s hidden out in that general area before.”

  “Information not worth sharing?” John’s voice remained patient, even as his wife smiled at him wryly.

  “Not until now. Your operative needed to be there. Even more, he needed to locate Jacoby himself, at least initially.”

  “Some things have to happen just the way they happen,” Maggie said.

  “Yes.”

  “Life lesson or psychic lesson?” John asked, honestly curious.

  “Six of one.” Briskly, Bishop continued, “I have an agent in place with an excellent cover story that can be maintained almost indefinitely if necessary. An agent with specific instructions to observe for a time sufficient to reveal anything unusual, and then report back so that we’ll know before he’s officially approached by non-SCU law enforcement agents whether Cole Jacoby has any psychic ability.”

  “And if he does?” John asked slowly. “If he has enough psychic ability to affect your agent?”

  Imperturbable, Bishop replied, “Then he’ll be a very, very special psychic indeed. And Nash will be stuck in that field office awhile longer.”

  “Because Jacoby will become an SCU target.”

  “He’s already an SCU target. We just aren’t sure—yet—what sort of threat he might pose, how much manpower it’ll take to get him, and whether we need to intervene officially or leave it to Nash and his people. The initial readings on Jacoby were . . . indeterminate.”

  “Is that as unusual as it sounds?” John wanted to know.

  “It’s troubling,” Bishop admitted. “Getting away from the agents transporting him, and then making it into a wilderness where it was virtually impossible to follow him, took careful planning and considerable cool-headed reasoning, but since then his observed actions have been erratic. To say the least.”

  “Erratic how?”

  “Let’s just say he hasn’t been very welcoming even to innocent game hunters just passing by his place. He’s called attention to himself, which I would have guessed isn’t part of his original plan. Locals are talking about him. And insular though they may be, nobody wants a dangerous armed stranger up on the mountain near their town.”

  “Local law enforcement?” John asked.

  “Not moved to intervene, so far. But that could change.” Bishop paused, then added, “Wherever he hid his stash, it isn’t where he is now, or at least we don’t believe it is. And yet he’s become aggressively protective of the remote cabin he rented up in the mountains.”

  John and Maggie exchanged glances, both silently hearing the admission that whether he had known before sending his agent, Bishop most certainly knew now exactly where Cole Jacoby was staying. But neither of them commented on that.

  “He is a wanted fugitive,” Maggie pointed out. “I’d expect him to be protective of his location.”

  “Protective in very specific ways,” Bishop said without saying much of anything at all.

  John sighed. “Well, I know better than to ask. You’ll tell us whatever it is you’re holding back if and when you’re ready to. But can you at least put Maggie’s mind to rest and tell her Luther is all right?”

  “He’s being taken care of as we speak,” Bishop replied.

  * * *

  “REMIND ME AGAIN why we’re doing this?” Hollis Templeton’s voice wasn’t exactly nervous, except around the edges.

  Her partner, Reese DeMarco, perfectly aware of the nerves, answered patiently. “Because you told Bishop weeks ago that you wanted to learn to interact with spirits outside our investigations, without the pressures of chasing bad guys.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “And our options to do so openly and without our badges are rather limited. Either you’re some kind of paranormal investigator like we were in Baron Hollow in July, which would involve carting along a lot of equipment we don’t need, or else you bill yourself as a medium and offer your services to allow loved ones to talk with the dead.”

  “But a séance? Seriously?”

  “At least Bishop didn’t ask you to wear a turban or a dozen jangling fake gold bracelets.”

  Hollis turned her head and glared at him. “You’re not helping.”

  DeMarco kept his attention on his driving as he navigated a rather winding mountain country blacktop in the waning twilight. “Sorry. But you did ask, Hollis. And it’s a good idea to explore the limits of your abilities whenever we have time between cases.”

  “In theory,” she muttered.

&n
bsp; “Well, we don’t have too many ways to explore, to learn to control,” he said. “We spend hours in the lab whenever the researchers come up with new tests, but we all know psychics don’t do well in lab conditions, so we seldom learn anything new about ourselves or our abilities. And then we’re in the field on cases where hunting down the bad guys and staying alive in the process is a little more imperative than learning how to talk to a spirit not involved in the investigation.”

  Hollis was silent for a moment, then said, “It was that girl in the hospital when we were waiting to see if Diana would pull through. Wandering the halls, literally a lost soul. It’s been six months since that investigation, and I still can’t get her out of my mind. When she asked me if there was supposed to be a light, I didn’t have an answer for her. Or the time to try to help her find the answers she needed.”

  “And so, we do this,” DeMarco said patiently. “You talk to spirits without the pressure of an investigation and try to help them. And if the client wants a séance as the setting, so be it.”

  “Easy for you to say,” Hollis muttered. “Listen, I’m not going to do the candle thing, or hold hands around the table, or any of that stuff. Certainly no Ouija board; those things are dangerous. And I won’t pretend to go into a trance. If I have to do a séance, it’ll be my way.”

  “Suits me. Though it might disappoint the client. According to what background info we were given, she’s had readings from every psychic and would-be psychic in about a dozen places in and around Tennessee. Even went all the way to California a couple of months back.”

  “Which hasn’t made her brother-in-law very happy. Yeah, I remember from the brief. He thinks she’s wasting money at best and being robbed blind at worst. Not exactly what you’d call a believer.”

  “Something else we’ve run into before and will again; might as well practice dealing with that too. In any case, our information is there were no kids and her husband’s brother stands to inherit as the only Alexander left. Maybe he just wants to protect what he believes he has coming to him; some of those psychics charged pretty steep fees.”

  “I’m not charging anything at all.”

  “Yeah, but I’m betting the brother-in-law doesn’t believe that. He’ll be looking for the hook whatever you say, just waiting for whatever it is you intend to use to draw his sister-in-law into your con and eventually relieve her of some of her—and his—money.”

  Hollis frowned. “I hate it when anything is about money. I’m also a little worried about whether I can see this spirit at all. He’s been gone—what?—nearly two years?”

  “Nearly.”

  “So maybe he’s gone on to wherever most spirits go eventually. Despite popular belief, most of them don’t seem to stick around very long.”

  “We’ll find out soon enough,” DeMarco said, turning the car in between two rather imposing brick pillars flanking a brick driveway that wound off into the distance.

  Glum, Hollis said, “Dammit, even the driveway cost a fortune. Or was laid back when brick was relatively cheap to use and labor even cheaper. I bet this is an old house. Filled with history. And spirits.”

  “Family home for about a century and a half, if I remember.”

  “Lovely. Probably lots of feuding went on over the decades. A philandering husband or cheating wife caught and . . . dispatched. A suicide or three. An axe murderer two generations ago.”

  With a slight smile, DeMarco said, “Don’t recall mention of an axe murderer.”

  “He probably got away with it,” Hollis said, still gloomy. “No bodies found, right? Right. So he buried them in the rose garden or cut them up into little pieces and tossed them into that river we passed a mile or so back. Or fed them to pigs.”

  “Ghoulish,” he noted.

  “I’m going to talk to the dead. I can be ghoulish if I want to. It does cast a whole new light on bacon, though, doesn’t it? I mean, that pigs are omnivores and will eat anything. It’s why I eat turkey bacon. Mostly.”

  Ignoring the tangent, DeMarco said, “It’s not as easy as most people would suppose to dismember a body, especially with an axe. Takes a lot of muscle and quite a bit of skill, never mind making a hell of a mess it’d be difficult to hide or cover up afterward—”

  “All right, all right.” Hollis turned her head to stare at him, frowning. “Why don’t you just tell me when I’m being an unreasonable pain in the ass?”

  “Where’s the fun in that?”

  Hollis couldn’t help but laugh a little when he sent her one of his quick, curiously crooked smiles. “Yeah, yeah. Your idea of a nice break between cases is to babysit me.”

  “Not exactly the way I think of it,” DeMarco replied, adding immediately, “If there are any spirits at the Alexander family home, they’ll probably be waiting and ready for us. For you. You’re broadcasting.”

  She sighed, perfectly aware that controlling that particular psychic ability was not exactly one of her strengths—and useless to even try whenever she was in the company of a telepath as powerful as DeMarco. “Emotions or thoughts?”

  “A jumble of both. Hollis, you can do this, you know.”

  “Yeah? What if another spirit asks me why there’s no light to guide them—wherever it is they’re supposed to go? What do I tell them?”

  “Follow your instincts. They’re actually pretty good.”

  Hollis didn’t want to admit out loud that she found it reassuring to hear that from him. Then again, since he was a telepath and she couldn’t turn off her psychic Broadcast Full Wattage button, he probably knew anyway.

  Dammit.

  She returned her attention forward just as the car rounded a curve and their destination loomed unnervingly large and very well lit a hundred yards or so ahead.

  “Jesus,” she muttered. “It’s a castle. It has turrets.”

  “Only two,” DeMarco murmured.

  Hollis was too busy dealing with her sense of intimidation and unease to laugh as she studied the house looming ever larger as they approached. Stone, some sections of it covered with ivy, numerous windows with the small panes that usually signaled considerable age, and a huge, grand front door that looked as if it would require a draft horse to pull it open. There were at least three floors, at least two wings in addition to the main section of the house, the two turrets DeMarco had noted—and battlements. Or, at least, what Hollis tentatively identified as battlements. Walkways high up between the turrets at roof level designed for guards to walk and scan the countryside for danger, like the threat of some army storming the place.

  Which was very weird for an American structure, very few of which had experienced a threat of that kind since the Alamo.

  Besides which, this was a home, not a fortress. She hoped.

  “Jesus,” she repeated. “Who are these people?”

  “Old money,” DeMarco replied succinctly. “And I’m guessing whoever built this place had a lengthy European trip behind them that inspired this sort of architecture.”

  “No kidding. Also a family that made damned sure of their privacy. They might not have a moat around the place, but it took us nearly an hour on decent blacktop roads to get here from the main highway, and thirty minutes on that from the nearest town; imagine how long it would have taken anyone a hundred years ago.”

  “I doubt they got many visitors,” DeMarco agreed. “And those who came probably stayed a week or longer, even a month. Even a summer. It was common among people of that time—and this sort of wealth.”

  “Damn, you don’t think they’ll ask us to stay, do you? If that isn’t a haunted house, I don’t know spirits at all. Other than a hospital, I can’t think of a place I’d feel less inclined to spend the night.”

  “I suppose that depends on how long the séance lasts,” DeMarco said practically. “It’s nearly dark, and by the time you’re done it’s likely to be fairly lat
e. Depending on how pleased our hostess is with her reading, always assuming you can make contact, if you can’t tell her what she wants to hear, I bet she’ll want more than one reading.”

  “And if I can tell her what she wants to hear?”

  “In that case, she may try to hire you to be her personal psychic.”

  With considerable feeling, Hollis said, “Thank God I already have a job.”

  DeMarco parked the car a dozen yards from the front door and said, “Well, right now your other job demands that you try your hand at contacting a spirit, probably only because his nearest and dearest wants to know that he’s at peace—except for missing her as much as she misses him, of course.”

  “Cynic.”

  “Realist. Come on, let’s go.”

  Hollis gathered herself and prepared to get out of the car but couldn’t help muttering a final, “Oh, man, I know I’m going to regret this.”

  And it was, really, more than a hunch.

  Haven

  Maggie Garrett said, “So you’re certain your agent can protect himself. Herself?”

  “Herself,” Bishop replied.

  “An especially strong shield?”

  “And instinctive, or at least unconscious. She doesn’t have to think about it to block, maybe even repel, energy. To most of our other psychics, telepaths included, behind her shield she reads as a sort of . . . null field. As if she’s not really there.”

  Maggie murmured, “Psychic stealth mode.”

  John said, “Now that sounds creepy.”

  “It can be,” Bishop allowed, adding dryly, “Not many people can sneak up on me. She can. But that seems to be more a side effect of her shield than a separate psychic ability. Her real strength is in detecting, measuring, and possibly repelling negative energy. And when she encounters it, she does more than detect it, she becomes hyperaware.”

  “What about positive energy?”