by Kay Hooper
“Privileged communication and so not monitored even within a highly monitored prison,” she agreed. “That would have been a good chance. Except that he had no visits from his attorney.”
“None at all?”
“No. A couple of phone calls, but there wasn’t much chance of an appeal. The prosecution had him cold. They caught him with about a hundred grand on him, all of it from the robbery. Security footage from the bank when it was actually robbed wasn’t much use because of a glitch, but they had footage of him pretty obviously casing the place the day before. They had his fingerprints. Even his DNA.”
“Should I ask how they had that at the scene of a bank robbery?” Luther asked warily.
Callie smiled. “The place was busy when he got there, and he killed a little time while he was covertly studying the layout pretending to fill out a deposit envelope. Which he licked.”
“Not very bright.”
“Well, in fairness to him, the camera footage shows him shoving it into a pocket. His bad luck that it fell out before he left and was missed by the cleaning crew that evening. Fingerprints on the envelope matched those later discovered in the vault.”
“He didn’t wear gloves?”
“Latex ones. One of which he left behind in the vault; the techs got his prints from the inside of the glove.”
Luther shook his head and frowned as he thought. “So he’s caught, tried, convicted, sent to prison. Talks to his legal counsel only over the phone. What about visitors?”
“No visitors.”
“What, none at all?”
“No.” Callie was certain. “Or mail. And no Internet connection. At all. In fact, no computer access; prisoners only get that after proven good behavior. Once he was inside, and except for a couple of brief calls from his attorney, he only had contact with the people inside.”
“No family?”
“A half sister, considerably older. Not so much estranged as complete strangers; her mother got total custody after a young, brief marriage, and Jacoby’s father apparently never saw her again. He remarried, then started a second family when his son was born. Far as we were able to determine, Cole Jacoby never met his half sister and likely doesn’t know she even exists.”
Luther frowned. “Okay. So no visitors maybe makes it even more likely that Jacoby had to spend a lot of time practicing, figuring out what he could do. And maybe easier on strangers. He still could have been trying to control other minds a long time before he escaped.”
“Trying, yeah. But even being semi-alone with his cellmate, or a guard or two now and then, it wouldn’t have been easy even for an experienced psychic to control any abilities, especially such a specific ability, with so many violent minds all around. So much negative energy. Prison bars can hold prisoners, but their violent energy permeates the place. It . . . soaks into the walls and floors. The older the prison, especially a high-security prison, the more negative the energy. Where they kept Jacoby the energy was very dark and very bleak.”
After studying her for a moment, Luther said, “You appear to speak from experience.”
She nodded. “Prisons were one of the places I visited when we were trying to analyze my abilities. Square foot by square foot, they’re the most negative places I’ve ever visited—and that includes psychiatric hospitals and trauma units. Even the federal country-club-type prisons where white-collar criminals are kept read as pretty damned negative, at least to somebody like me.”
“And the most positive place you’ve read?”
“So far, it was a monastery in Asia.”
He blinked, thought about asking her, then decided that was an undoubtedly interesting story for later.
Callie didn’t seem to notice. “So if Jacoby was able to open any kind of psychic door to his own mind in that prison, it’s dollars to doughnuts he let something in, and that was more than likely to be negative energy.”
“Let something in before he was able to escape the prison.”
“If he was practicing, especially something new to him, that’s a virtual certainty. We all tend to leave ourselves vulnerable when we use our abilities. We’re somewhat protected when we use them in a positive way. His way wasn’t positive.”
“And whatever he let in, he wouldn’t be able to control.”
“I wouldn’t think so. Not then. And I still think the more minds around him, the less likely he was and is to control a specific mind with any kind of accuracy.”
Luther frowned. “Negative energy. If he started trying to control other minds there, in prison, and didn’t really know what he was doing because the abilities were new, or he’d never tried to use them before, then wouldn’t he have been affected then? I mean, wouldn’t he have shown signs of erratic behavior during and right after his escape?”
Callie considered, then nodded slowly. “You’d think there would have been some sign. But I don’t know; if it was recent enough, he might have been able to hide what was happening to him. Especially if he was focused on escaping. If prison is where he first tried to control other minds, he likely would have failed except maybe in some really small way. But in just trying, and trying there, unable to protect himself even if he realized he should, he still could have . . . fed off negative energy. Even then. Unconsciously. Which could have given him more power, including the power to open a door in his own mind.”
“And let in something darker than he expected?”
“Maybe. Maybe he started shaping his mind, his abilities, and because he was in a negative place, that was the only energy he could use. He probably couldn’t tell the difference. Strong energy is strong energy; it takes experience to tell one from the other, usually.”
“And,” Luther said, “however he experimented, whatever the results, there was enough to convince him he could control other minds, if the conditions were right. That he had a shot at using whatever it is to escape federal custody. Maybe he had a successful experiment or two, and the authorities just never noticed.”
“Possible. Even likely. The paranormal tends to be the last possibility most people consider. Way easier to believe a sleeping guard just nodded off than that he was put to sleep by a psychic.”
“Let’s assume,” Luther said. “That he practiced. That there was success. But maybe he realized there were too many people around, too many minds to control. He had to figure out a way to get himself alone with just one or two. He’d been inside before, he knew about prisoner transfers, about deals made. Also knew what bait was most likely to get him out of there.”
“The money. No one knew where he’d hidden the rest of it. No evidence at all, and no sign of a partner.”
“So just him. And feds eager to question him, maybe make a deal. They make deals with serial killers; Jacoby wasn’t dangerous, never had been, and they didn’t see him as a threat.”
“Especially,” Callie agreed, “a psychic threat. Bishop was already suspicious, though I don’t think even he had any idea Jacoby was capable of escaping custody.”
“Or he would have sent SCU agents?”
“That, or made sure Jacoby was knocked out for the trip.” And when Luther lifted his brows, she added, “Best not to take any chances, would have been his reasoning.”
“Well, events proved that probably would have been wise,” Luther said dryly.
“Yeah.” Callie brooded for a moment. “But what’s here now, in Jacoby or around that cabin . . . I’ve never sensed anything that dark, even in a prison, and most certainly not at a distance. If Jacoby came up here with a . . . door open to darkness, with a latent ability suddenly gone active, or an old ability he was still learning how to control, if he didn’t know how to protect himself from a darkness that powerful, or even—stupidly—welcomed it because he thought it meant more power for him . . .”
“Trouble.”
“I’ll say. We haven’t found any p
sychic capable of the sort of mind control Jacoby must have used. That would take a lot of power. Probably a lot more than Jacoby ever had a hope of mastering, whether he realized it or not. That kind of power would have had no trouble getting inside him, and it’s more than likely taken hold of him by now.”
“You’re saying in hardly more than two weeks, he could have gone from controlling, rather benignly, the minds of two agents to being . . . possessed . . . by some negative energy powerful enough to control him?”
“It’s possible. Maybe even likely. His behavior up here is clear evidence something unusual is going on with him. Whether it was here or he brought it with him and it broke out once he got here, that darkness is nothing but negative. Maybe even evil.”
Curiously, Luther said, “You believe in evil as an actual, physical force?”
“Oh, yeah.” Her voice remained calm, her eyes serene. “And the thing is, we have more to worry about than what it’s doing to Jacoby. There’s also you. You have that cracked shield. You’re vulnerable because you have a new ability not under your control. At all. You have an open door. The darkness, the evil, up there could be very bad for you.”
SIX
“What are you doing here?” Hollis repeated, her voice a little louder but still low. “You’re one of Diana’s spirit guides, not mine.” She frowned. “I don’t even have guides.”
The spirit who in life had been a young girl called Brooke shook her head. “Diana has lots of spirit guides; she needed them to get through what she had to in her life. But I was there last time because of the situation, not because of her. Your team was still fighting Samuel, and you needed my help.”
“Sure that wasn’t a little bit of vengeance on your part? I mean, he was directly responsible for your death.”
Brooke’s young face appeared thoughtful. “You know, there really isn’t much of a need for revenge or even justice once you get here.”
“Here?”
Brooke smiled.
Hollis didn’t waste a breath for a curse. “And now?”
“You wanted to learn how to handle being a medium. I’m going to help you do that. At least for a while.”
“Why?” Hollis asked, never accused of being indirect.
Brooke seemed to hesitate, then said, “Bishop and Miranda aren’t wrong to be . . . concerned about you.”
Hollis hugged her upraised legs a little tighter. “Too much going on inside my brain, huh?”
“Let’s just say the energy is becoming . . . palpable.”
“Meaning?”
Brooke said slowly, “The only time you—unconsciously—used a conduit was when you helped Diana. Reese was there, touching you, and because you were so tired, and the need was so great, you drew on his strength without being consciously aware of it.”
Hollis moved uneasily. “I wish you hadn’t told me that.”
“You already knew.”
“Okay, maybe. But not for sure. And I don’t like it. Bad enough I’ve needed him as an anchor to escape Diana’s gray time. I don’t want to be someone—something—that feeds off others.”
“You can’t look at it that way.”
“Oh, can’t I?”
“No. All his life, Reese has had extra energy, at times almost too much to contain. You’ve noticed it yourself, that tension you’ve sensed in him. The hair-trigger alertness. He worked hard to contain it; it’s why he has that unique double shield of his, and why the surface of him almost always seems so calm. It’s also one reason he joined the military, to have a strict focus, a rigid routine, and a high degree of physical activity to help burn off excess energy.”
Hollis felt almost as if she were eavesdropping, learning things about him Reese wasn’t the one telling her, but somehow she couldn’t ask the spirit to stop. Something inside her told her that she needed to hear this, now, and that Reese would be slow to tell her—if he told her at all.
“Bishop saw that excess energy and Reese’s ways of dealing with it. Because of the experiences of other agents, he thought there was probably a better way. Better for Reese.”
“And better for me? But if he has too much energy, and I have too much energy, then— Well . . . bang? Too much energy collides and both of us stroke out or worse?”
“If the two of you were just trying to combine energies, especially without a powerful emotional connection, that’s probably what would happen.”
Hollis narrowed her eyes and stared at Brooke, but the spirit remained serene.
“But Bishop believes that instead of merely combining your energies, both of you can act as conduits, channeling energy safely away from yourselves at need. You did it helping Diana—by channeling not only your energy but some of Reese’s as well.”
“You said it yourself: That was a onetime thing, pure instinct driven by need.”
“But successful.”
Hollis thought about it for a minute. “You didn’t just casually drop in that little item about a powerful emotional connection, did you?”
Brooke smiled.
“Look, whatever we—he said during a difficult and exhausting point in an investigation, the truth is that we’re partners. And that’s all. There isn’t an emotional connection.”
“In just about five minutes,” Brooke said, “Reese is going to walk through that door. Not because he heard you talking, but because he feels that you’re awake and upset. That is an emotional connection. Like it or not, the beginnings of something potentially much more powerful already exist between the two of you.”
Hollis glanced toward the connecting door, then unconsciously lowered her voice even more. “He’s a natural caretaker, that’s all.”
“Actually, he isn’t.” Brooke looked thoughtful. “Probably as a consequence of struggling all his life to contain all that energy, even his emotions turned inward. Oh, he’s an honorable man and a responsible man, which made him an excellent officer in the military. And makes him excel at undercover work. But he could probably count on one hand the people he’s truly cared for in his life—and most of those would be recent adds.”
“Look, I don’t know what it is you expect me to do.” Hollis didn’t even like having this knowledge; it made her uncomfortable. Assuming any of it was even real.
“Just . . . keep an open mind.”
Hollis stared at her. “I’m a medium talking to the spirit of a girl who was murdered by an insane preacher bent on ruling the world—after he destroyed it with his very scary and evil psychic abilities. I see auras. I can bring myself pretty much back from the dead and heal others at least to a degree. My friends are telepaths and seers and other mediums, and I know about and can visit—sometimes against my will—a gray place that’s probably limbo or purgatory but definitely an elsewhere, and is really, really cold and creepy. All of that can be defined as beyond normal, and I believe in it all. I’ve experienced it all. If I were any more open-minded, my brains would fall out.”
* * *
WHEN COLE FOUGHT his way back to consciousness, it was to hear a low, rumbling sound that was at once strange and familiar. And to smell something equally both strange—and familiar.
He managed to sit up, to swing his legs off the cot. He lifted his hands to rub his eyes but stopped short of touching himself because the smell was overpowering. He blinked and tried to focus on the very dim light of dawn coming through the cabin’s windows and the even fainter reddish gleam of embers in the fireplace.
That was why his hands looked red.
Wasn’t it?
He fumbled for the kerosene lamp on the rustic coffee table and fumbled even more to get a match from the box beside it and light the lamp.
That low rumbling sound. What was it? It made the hairs on the back of his neck stand out.
And the smell made his stomach churn.
He was finally able to light the lamp and adju
st the flame until its yellowish light brightened the room, managing not to actually look at his hands until it was done. Then, a wordless dread inside him, he looked.
It hadn’t been the fireplace light that made his hands look red.
They were stained red. His hands, wrists, halfway up his forearms, stained red and stinking of something metallic that was familiar in an odd way and explained why his stomach churned. Flashes of memories mixed with a primal instinct.
Blood.
His hands were covered with dried blood.
Baffled, fearful, he stared at them for a long moment, until the low rumbling sound again drew his attention. He looked up, around the room.
Their eyes weren’t red anymore, but his dogs were all tensely awake, staring at him.
And growling.
* * *
BROOKE WAS SMILING faintly. “Okay. Just so you . . . don’t lose sight of that. Expecting the unexpected should probably be your mantra.”
“I thought that was some things have to happen just the way they happen.”
“The SCU mantra. And Haven’s, really. I guess being ready for the unexpected should be your personal mantra.”
“God knows it fits.” Shaking her head, Hollis said, “Well, everything else aside, I don’t know what it is you expect to happen here. Anna wants to communicate with her dead husband. Maybe I can help bring that about, or maybe I can’t. Wouldn’t want to tell me which it is, would you?”
“That would be—”
“Against the rules, yeah. Thought that would be your answer. Well, then, what about the bright light. Can you tell me—”
Brooke was shaking her head. “All I can tell you about that is some people see it when they cross over and some people don’t.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I suppose because every experience is unique.”