Hostage

by Kay Hooper

  It was Luther’s turn to nod, gravely. “For the sake of psychic research if nothing else.”

  “Absolutely.”

  Flirting? Cesar wanted to know.

  Callie was momentarily startled, since it wasn’t a word or even a concept that she had worked on with her dog. But she supposed it was certainly possible he had picked up the concept on his own. Because he was a very smart dog, and he was acutely observant when it came to the subtleties of human behavior.

  Not subtle.

  She stared at her relaxed dog for a moment, gazing into calm brown eyes, then returned her attention to Luther as he laughed.

  “No, not subtle at all. I suppose we can work on that. Or just not bother.”

  “It’s been less than a week,” she pointed out.

  “It’s been a lifetime. Two lifetimes. You have to admit, a lot was packed into the last few days. You saved my life. Cesar and I saved yours. I think there’s a Chinese proverb or something about a saved life belonging to you. So, in our case—”

  “Don’t you dare,” Callie said, trying not to laugh.

  “It’s a three-way,” he said with unexpected and rather beguiling humor. “Though that can stay just between us. Assuming Cesar gets it and agrees to keep it to himself.”

  Agree. Cesar closed his eyes with a sigh, able to relax at last and get some sleep, tuning out the humans who, at their cores, were utterly certain they were his guardians and not the other way around.

  Amusing creatures, humans.

  * * *

  BISHOP EMERGED FROM the mine shaft’s narrow door—the door put into place and heavily barred decades ago when this shaft had been closed—and Tony didn’t have to ask; whatever he’d seen inside had been bad. The scar on the left side of Bishop’s face, usually almost invisible, was pale in contrast to his tan, and a sure sign of emotional turmoil that was otherwise hidden.

  Since this was not, technically, their investigation, or at least not one Tony had been involved in, he had elected to remain outside and had been watching searchers, some with cadaver dogs, combing the mountain slope all around the mine shaft.

  Now, as their unit chief joined him, Tony merely asked, “Do you think they’ll find more bodies?”

  Bishop shook his head once. “I don’t think there was time. Cole Jacoby wasn’t a killer, and this wasn’t about killing. I doubt he was even consciously aware of doing what he did. Judging by what was found in the shaft, the girl was a hiker. She made two bad mistakes; she went hiking alone and she went hiking in this area. She was a victim of opportunity, almost dropped in Jacoby’s lap.”

  “If it wasn’t about killing—”

  “It was about increasing the level of negative energy he was able to channel.”

  “So he—or, rather, it—could open this side of the vortex?”

  “Yeah.”

  Tony thought about it. “So weren’t you taking a chance having Hollis on the other side of the vortex? I mean, I get that you believed only a powerful medium could have closed that end, and in such a way as to get rid of a lot of the dark energy, but with her there it was a certainty that she’d draw even more energy to gather all around her.”

  “It was a chance we had to take.”

  “You were counting on Callie and Luther being able to keep Jacoby distracted just long enough.”

  “Something like that.”

  Tony eyed him. “You knew both of them would be wounded.” It really wasn’t a question.

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

  “So whoever you and Haven sent here was going to get hurt?”

  “Callie and Luther needed to be here.”

  Too accustomed to uninformative replies, Tony sighed and said, “Well, both teams got the job done. But didn’t Maggie warn you that Luther might not be all that pleased by how things went down?”

  “Luther met Callie.” Bishop turned and began to head back down the slope. “Let’s go, Tony.”

  “It sounds like a line in a song,” Tony complained, following him. “Luther met Callie. That had to happen too, huh?”

  “It had to happen here.”

  “You going to tell them that?”

  “Of course not.”

  Since the slope was treacherous in places, Tony concentrated on not falling on his ass, not speaking again until they reached their Jeep, parked on one of the old logging roads.

  “I still don’t get where the money ties in to everything,” he complained as he climbed in the passenger side. “It was awfully convenient that Jacoby stumbled on both sides of a vortex.”

  Bishop started the Jeep and guided it through the crowd of other vehicles, then turned toward town, as usual finding his way easily despite the confusing network of dirt roads and sometimes hardly more than paths crisscrossing each other.

  “Boss?”

  After a moment, Bishop said, “Energy affects most of us, you know that. In an inexperienced or latent psychic, the right kind of energy can guide or even control the psychic on an unconscious level.”

  “He was being controlled all along?”

  “I doubt that Jacoby was anywhere near powerful enough himself to have stolen time and memories from two agents.”

  “And before that?”

  “The seeds were probably planted before he was caught, and likely even before the robbery. It was far too ambitious a heist for him based on his history and known skills. And there were too many little glitches in the building’s security systems that helped him pull it off.”

  “Glitches caused by energy?”

  “No way to prove it, but I’m guessing yes.”

  “But that would mean there was energy involved long before he put the two agents out.”

  “Yes. He suffered a head injury during a fairly brief prison stay when he was quite a bit younger.”

  “And head injuries often turn latents into active psychics.”

  Bishop nodded. “He might never have been aware of the change in him. But since it probably started in prison, it’s virtually certain that the first energy he was exposed to as an active psychic was negative energy.”

  “Yeah, I remember Callie talking about how negative the energy is in prisons. Worse than just about any other place, she said.”

  “And strong. I doubt Jacoby could have resisted, even if he’d known what was happening to him.”

  Tony thought about that, hanging on as the Jeep bumped its way over the rough logging road. “So it was no coincidence that Jacoby just happened to rent a cabin built literally on top of one end of an energy vortex.”

  “There are no coincidences. The dark energy was already in him when a bored prisoner looked up information on himself and discovered a half sister he hadn’t known about.”

  “He had Internet access in prison?”

  “At that point, he was a nonviolent offender. He had Internet access with a guard looking over his shoulder. A guard with no way of knowing that the family research Jacoby was engaged in could produce anything dangerous.”

  “Okay. And then?”

  “He researched his half sister, then the Alexander family she’d married into. Read about Alexander House. When he got out of prison that time, he actually stayed there. But neither Anna nor her brother-in-law were in residence.”

  “And we know all this how?”

  Not exactly answering, Bishop said, “We’ll find his name in the guest registry; he stayed at the hotel for a week nearly two years ago.”

  “Long before the bank robbery.”

  “Yes. And on that trip to Alexander House, he passed through Devil’s Gap, it being the closest town to the hotel.”

  Tony waited a moment, then asked, “And?”

  “And he was drawn here, to this mountain.”

  “Why?”

  “That hea
d injury in prison. He was already doing things he couldn’t have logically explained. Going to Alexander House to meet the sister he hadn’t known existed was probably one of the last real decisions or choices he actually made with a clear mind. Ironic.”

  “Because—?”

  “Because that was the beginning of the end for Jacoby. The end probably would have come eventually, since he was bound to land back in jail at some point and again be surrounded by dark energy. But visiting Alexander House, and then coming to this mountain, sealed his fate.”

  Tony didn’t find that at all melodramatic, which rather surprised him. “He wasn’t strong enough to fight it, I gather.”

  “No. We both know evil, Tony; it’s insidious, especially if you don’t know it’s . . . lurking. By the time he realized, if he even did, it was far too late for him to regain control.”

  “So it was something else in him, that evil, that wanted him at the cabin?”

  “On one side of a natural but very powerful energy vortex.”

  Tony remained silent this time until, to his relief, a logging road finally spilled them out onto a real, if winding, blacktop road. Then he spoke slowly. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but Jacoby being controlled like that, being lured so specifically, implies that the energy was . . . had . . . a consciousness long before Alexander House or Devil’s Gap, or that cabin back there.”

  Bishop was silent.

  So Tony tried again. “Or maybe . . . was being used by a consciousness, at least in the beginning. Before any dark energy at the mouth of a vortex could come out and play. Maybe by a single human mind.”

  “Not so sure about the human part,” Bishop said finally.

  “Wait a minute—this was done by a person?”

  “You heard the sheriff. Not counting the victim, there were only three people up here this last week. Callie, Luther, and Jacoby. All were affected by the energy of the vortex, but only Jacoby was being controlled by it.”

  “So . . . whoever it was, whoever started everything, they weren’t on the mountain.”

  “No.”

  “Do you know who it was?”

  “I have my suspicions.”

  Suspicions Tony knew Bishop would keep to himself until he was certain of his facts. Despite the truth that his agents and operatives were more often than not left in the dark about certain facts of their investigations, Bishop virtually always knew more than he shared.

  And sometimes that was a lot.

  “The point,” Bishop said, “is that we won this round.”

  “There’ll be another?” Tony asked warily.

  The Jeep rounded a curve and came suddenly upon the rather odd little town called Devil’s Gap, and as Bishop drove down the single main street toward the town’s single medical clinic, he said, “One thing I’ve learned is that sometimes an enemy can haunt you for a long time.”

  * * *

  HOLLIS WAS THOROUGHLY exasperated. “He has the jet. And could certainly get a chopper from the airport. Why the hell didn’t he get here last night?”

  “Brooke didn’t say he would,” DeMarco reminded her calmly. “She just said he was on his way.”

  “And is he coming by way of California? From a starting point of somewhere near Boston?”

  “I have no idea.”

  She glared at him. “Why are you so calm? Yesterday you were pissed at him.”

  “I’m still pissed. But also very curious. For one thing, even you admitted that it wasn’t like a spirit to offer such very specific information as Brooke did about the money. Nor is it usual for a spirit to then warn us to keep quiet about it until Bishop got here.”

  “Yeah, that part of it is seriously annoying. Especially after she pointed the finger at Owen. I could barely look at him last night, and I’m glad we haven’t seen him yet today.” She frowned. “Are you packed?”

  “Yeah, same as you.” He leaned in the doorway to his bedroom and watched her pacing their shared sitting room. “And I imagine our hosts are wondering why we haven’t left yet.”

  “Probably haven’t left their own bedrooms. I don’t think we’ve ever seen them before ten, have we?”

  “No, neither one seems to be an early riser.”

  “But it’s nearly ten now, right?” Like most SCU agents, Hollis couldn’t wear a watch. In fact, if she got too close and most certainly if she touched it, she could stop a clock. Easily.

  DeMarco was the rare SCU agent who could wear a watch. But this morning, when he looked at the one on his wrist, she knew that had changed.

  “Stopped on you, huh?”

  “Yeah.” He didn’t sound either surprised or annoyed, merely matter-of-fact. “But the clock in my head is still working; it’s quarter to ten.”

  “Okay. I say we take our bags and head downstairs. If Bishop isn’t here by the time we get the car loaded, we can damned well either confront Owen or start looking for the money ourselves.”

  “We only have Brooke’s word for it that Anna even has a half brother. I couldn’t find any trace of that information last night, remember.”

  Gloomy, she said, “Yeah, but you also couldn’t get very deeply into the genealogy stuff, not with the Internet connections here. Besides, Bishop knew. You heard it in his voice when we called him, just like I did. He was just evasive enough to let it show. What I can’t figure out is what’s up with all the weird secrecy. This kind of secrecy, I should say. And the delay. Can you remember a case where he put his agents on hold until he got there himself?”

  “That’s not exactly what he’s doing.”

  “Because this wasn’t supposed to be a case? He knew it was a case when he sent us here. Whether he knew for sure when he sent us might be open for debate, but I’m betting one thing he was certain of was that he needed two teams in specific places to accomplish whatever his goal was. He knew about the vortex. Maybe he needed us here to confirm it, and to help close it, but he knew about it.”

  “And the money?”

  Hollis was frowning. “Did Bishop know Owen has it? I don’t know, maybe. He’s got such a damned Machiavellian mind it’s sure as hell possible. And it’s going to get him into trouble one day. Serious trouble.”

  “Most of us seem to be in agreement on that point.”

  She sighed. “Yeah, I know. Come on, let’s go downstairs. I can’t stand just waiting around without doing anything.”

  “You won’t get an argument.”

  SIXTEEN

  The timing was perfect. Hollis and DeMarco reached the bottom of the stairs just as Thomas was admitting Bishop—and Tony Harte.

  “I had to come along,” he said to his fellow team members. “Still trying to get it all worked out in my head.”

  “Join the club,” Hollis said with some feeling. But she was too professional to air her grievances in front of the stately butler, so all she added, to him, was, “Thomas, could you please tell Anna and Owen that we’d like to speak to them before we leave? We’ll wait in the parlor.”

  “Of course, miss.”

  Tony stared after him, then raised his brows at Hollis. “Seriously?”

  “Yeah, he’s from another age. This way.” She led them all into the Grand Parlor and closed the door behind them.

  But it was DeMarco who spoke first. “Who did you tell him you were?” he asked Bishop. “I’m guessing the truth might spook Owen, to say the least.”

  “I spoke to Mrs. Alexander earlier this morning and told her there was a family matter I needed to discuss with her. From what you’ve said about Owen Alexander, I expect he’ll join us out of curiosity.”

  “Probably,” DeMarco agreed.

  Hollis was looking at her boss through narrowed eyes. “I take it your morning has been busy?”

  Bishop smiled faintly. “The other side of the vortex.”

  Dammit, he has a way of ta
king the wind out of my sails. She wondered how many of her fellow agents had read that thought, but her tone was milder when she said, “I hope nobody was hurt. We thought we heard a gunshot just before the last door was sealed.”

  “Callie Davis was wounded, though not with a gun. She’s fine, recovering in the clinic in Devil’s Gap.”

  Hollis blinked. “We were that close?”

  “With the town and half a mountain between you, yes.” He briefly explained that Callie had been informally teamed with a Haven operative, who had also been wounded by Cole Jacoby.

  And that Luther Brinkman had shot and killed Jacoby.

  “Jacoby the bank robber? Jacoby who was Anna’s half brother?” Hollis wanted to know.

  “Yes. But half siblings separated by a lot of years and distance; the two families were never blended. As far as I can tell, Anna never even met Cole Jacoby when they were kids. She’s probably forgotten he ever existed.”

  “If she even knew,” DeMarco offered.

  Bishop nodded. “Entirely possible. But Jacoby knew; when we looked more closely at his history, we found he’d done research a couple of years ago. And came here, looking for Mrs. Alexander.”

  “She wasn’t here?” Hollis guessed.

  “No. But he had the chance to explore the place. It was after the biggest robbery of his life that he returned here, believing this would be a safe place to stash the money. But since she again wasn’t here at the time, and since Owen Alexander appears to have made some sort of deal with Jacoby, I doubt he would have told her about the visit.”

  Tony looked at Hollis, again with lifted brows. “Is Alexander the sort of man who’d be willing to hide nearly ten million dollars in stolen currency?”

  “I wouldn’t have said so.” She frowned. “Unless he was lying to us, he more or less relinquished control of the family business but stayed on the board of directors. Not really the actions of an ambitious or greedy man, right? No sign either he or his sister-in-law was in financial trouble. And no signs of criminal leanings in his background. Other than one bad mistake he made as a kid and has been haunted by ever since, he appears to have walked the straight and narrow.”