by Kay Hooper
Oh, shit. Not again.
“Dani?” Roxanne appeared at her side, seemingly out of the smoke, gun drawn, vivid green eyes sharp even squinted against the stench. “Where is it?”
Huh. This is new. But I guess…
“Dani, you’re all we’ve got. You’re all they’ve got. Do you understand that? Which way?”
Wish I could see something in all this smoke. Something to tell me where this building is.
It seemed easier this time for her to concentrate on the stench of blood she knew none of the others could smell. A blood trail that was all they had to guide them.
Well, that and this vision. Why do I keep going through the motions? There must be a reason.
She nearly gagged, then pointed. “That way. Toward the back. But…”
“But what?”
“Down. Lower. There’s a basement level.” Stairs. She remembered stairs. Going down them. Down into corridors everywhere, and—No, wait. That wasn’t this vision. That had been during the dream-walking.
Hadn’t it?
Hallways in every direction, brightly lit, featureless but almost humming with energy.
Energy?
“It isn’t on the blueprints.”
“I know.” She dragged her mind back, wasting an instant to wonder how she could do that and yet couldn’t seem to deviate from the vision-dream script.
I told you all this before, dammit. No, wait—I told Hollis all this before. So where is she? And why is somebody else speaking her lines?
“Bad place to get trapped in a burning building,” Roxanne noted. “The roof could fall in on us. Easily.”
Exactly her lines.
Bishop appeared out of the smoke as suddenly as Roxanne had, weapon in hand, his face stone, eyes haunted. “We have to hurry.”
“Yeah,” Roxanne replied, “we get that. Burning building. Maniacal killer. Good seriously outnumbered by evil. Bad situation.” Her words and tone were flippant, but her gaze on his face was anything but, intent and measuring.
It was always Hollis before. Why isn’t it now?
“You forgot potential victim in maniacal killer’s hands,” he said, not even trying to match her tone.
“Never. Dani, did you see the basement, or are you feeling it?”
Oh, right—I have Paris’s abilities.
“Stairs. I saw them.” The weight on her shoulders felt like the world, too heavy to cast aside, so maybe that was what was pressing her down. Or…“And what I feel now…He’s lower. He’s underneath us.”
“Then we look for stairs.”
Dani coughed. She was trying to think, trying to remember. But dreams recalled were such dim, insubstantial things, even vision dreams sometimes, and there was no way for her to be sure she was remembering clearly.
Dammit, why do I keep going through the motions? Why don’t I just lead the way to the damn stairs?
And where the hell is Hollis?
Why is that different this time?
Is it me?
What in God’s name did I do?
She was overwhelmingly conscious of precious time passing and looked at her wrist, at the absurdly childish Mickey Mouse watch with its bright red band and cartoon face that told her it was 4:17 P.M. on Monday…October 13.
What? Oh, my God. That’s tomorrow.
Why, dammit?
What the hell happened to change the date?
“Dani?”
She shook off the momentary confusion. “The stairs aren’t where you’d expect them to be,” she said, coughing again. “They’re in a small room or office, something like that. Not a hallway. Hallways—”
“What?”
The instant of certainty was fleeting but absolute and gave the term déjà vu a whole new meaning for Dani.
Jesus, it’s like I’m stuck in a loop—
“The basement is divided,” she heard herself say. “By a solid wall. Two big rooms. And accessed from this main level by two different stairways, one at each side of the building, in the back.”
Two traps. Not one.
No…two parts to one trap.
“What kind of crazy-ass design is that?” Roxanne demanded.
“If we get out of this alive, you can ask the architect.” The smell of blood was almost overpowering, but Dani’s headache was—She didn’t have a headache this time around.
Okay, I’m definitely stronger now, but—
A trap with two parts…
Tomorrow! How can it be so soon?
What happened to change the date? Is it because we found—or will find—the warehouse quicker this time? Because Paris was able to transfer her abilities to me?
No, wait…
Bishop said potential victim.
God. Oh, God.
Where’s Hollis?
Marc appeared out of the smoke as abruptly as the other two had and took her hand in his free one. In his other hand was a big revolver.
Right gun this time. Déjà vu.
“Where to now?” he asked. “I can’t see shit for all this smoke.”
Roxanne replied to his question. “Dani is guiding us.”
He looked down at her, his expression calm but his eyes holding something as intimate as a caress.
Wow. Never knew a man could make love with just his eyes before. How about that?
Marc said, “I always knew the beautiful assistant was the real wizard. Like the man behind the curtain. Where to, Dani?”
The same—yet not. Why does it keep changing?
It was Bishop who said, “You don’t know which side they’re in.”
“No. I’m sorry.” She felt as if she’d been apologizing to this man since she met him. Hell, she had been.
That isn’t right. He apologized to me. The first words he said to me were an apology. Because of Paris. Because he used Paris as bait.
Bait…
Am I figuring out the trap?
Or am I part of it?
Roxanne was frowning. To Bishop, she said, “Great. Wonderful. You’re psychically blind, Gabe and I are useless except to hold guns, and we’re in a huge burning building without a freakin’ map.”
“Which is why Dani is here.” Those pale sentry eyes were fixed on her face.
Dani felt a little dizzy but oddly confident as well. “All I know is that he’s down there somewhere.”
“And Hollis?”
Hollis. Oh, my God.
She’s the potential victim.
The monster has her.
“Dani?” Bishop’s face was even more strained.
Hollis. He asked about Hollis.
And she had an answer for him. Of sorts. “She isn’t dead. She’s bait, you know that. She was always bait, to lure you.”
“And you,” Bishop said.
To lure me?
To lure us.
Always bait, to lure us. But he only ever wanted to catch one of us. He just wanted you distracted, disarmed—
“We have to go, now,” she heard herself say urgently. “He won’t wait, not this time.”
The conversation had taken only brief minutes, but even so the smoke was thicker, the crackling roar of the fire louder, and the heat growing ever more intense.
“We’re running out of time on every level,” Marc said, his fingers tightening around Dani’s. “The storm may roll around us like the last few have done, so we can’t count on rain. It’s been dry as hell for weeks, and this place is going up like a match. I’ve called it in.”
Bishop swore under his breath. “Marc—”
“Don’t worry, they know it’s a hostage situation, and they won’t come in. But they can damn well aim their hoses outside and try to save the nearby property.” He paused, then added, “Am I the only one who suspects this bastard planned out every last detail, including this place being a tinderbox?”
Roxanne said, “No, you aren’t the only one. We’re on his timetable, just like he wants.”
Bishop turned and started toward the rear of t
he building and the south corner. “I’ll go down on this side. You three head for the east corner.”
Dani wondered if instinct was guiding him as well, but all she said, to Roxanne, was, “He doesn’t care whose timetable we’re on.”
“I noticed that. Why do I get the feeling he blames himself for this mess?”
“He couldn’t have known—”
“According to everything I’ve heard about him, he certainly could have known. Maybe he did. Part of this, at least. Something that might have stopped things before it got this far. Come on, let’s go.”
Dani and Marc followed, but she had to ask, “Do you believe it’s his fault?”
Roxanne paused for only an instant, looking back over her shoulder—
And for an instant, Dani saw Paris instead.
And then Hollis.
And then Miranda.
And when Roxanne replied, she sounded like an eerie blend of four different voices. “He played God one time too many. He thinks he can stop the prophecy. And we’re paying the price for his arrogance.”
We’re paying the price.
We are.
Prophecy? What prophecy?
Dani held on to Marc’s hand even tighter as they followed the other woman. She could hardly breathe, her throat tighter despite the fact that, as they reached the rear half of the building, the smoke wasn’t nearly as thick. They very quickly discovered, in the back of what might once have been a small office, a door that opened smoothly and silently to reveal a stairwell.
The stairwell was already lighted.
“Bingo,” Roxanne said.
Useless to warn them. We all know it’s a trap. Why are we just walking into it?
Wait.
I know this. The trap was the whole idea.
It wasn’t about killing women. Not here, not in Venture. That was only…window dressing.
That was the first part of the trap, to lure…us.
Us. Bishop because he’s the threat and had to be…disarmed. Paris because he wanted her ability. And now he knows it’s mine, so the trap is for me.
This trap was always for me.
Roxanne shifted her weapon to a steady two-handed grip and sent Dani and Marc a quick look. “Ready?”
Dani didn’t spare the energy to wonder how anyone on earth could ever be ready for this. Instead, she just nodded.
Marc squeezed her hand, then released it and took a half step closer to Roxanne, saying to Dani, “Stay behind me. You’re the only one of us without a gun.”
“She doesn’t need a gun,” Roxanne said.
At least I know now why I don’t need a gun. If she means what I think she means.
“Maybe not, but I still want her behind me,” Marc said in a tone that not many would have argued with. “Let’s go if we’re going.”
Roxanne had only taken one step when a thunderous crash sounded behind them and a new wave of almost intolerable heat threatened to shove them bodily into the stairwell.
The roof was falling in.
They exchanged glances and then, without emotion, Roxanne said, “Close the door behind us.”
Oh, shit.
It always ends this way.
Dani gathered all the courage she could find, and if her response wasn’t as emotionless as the other woman’s, at least it was steady.
“Right,” she said, and closed the door behind them as they began their descent into hell.
21
Monday, October 13
8:30 A.M.
THIS IS ONE MORNING when I definitely need more than donuts, with or without sprinkles,” Hollis said with a yawn as she climbed out of Jordan’s cruiser in the parking lot of a small, moderately busy café one street back from Main in downtown Venture. “I just can’t pull all-nighters like I used to.”
“Join the club.” He shut the door on his side and stretched to ease stiff muscles, then glanced toward the café and groaned. “Oh, hell, here comes Matt Condrey.”
“Friend of yours?” she asked, amused as she watched a sturdy bearded man about the same age as the chief deputy weaving among cars to quickly make his way toward Jordan.
“It’s a myth that men don’t gossip,” Jordan said, mostly from the side of his mouth. “Because here comes the worst gossip in Prophet County. Bet you ten bucks the first words out of his mouth will be to ask why we haven’t arrested anybody for the murders the public isn’t supposed to know about yet.”
“I don’t think I’ll take that bet. Meet you inside.”
“Yeah, leave me to my doom. Thanks very much. You’re a cruel woman.” He raised his voice to add, “Hey, Matt. Something I can do for you?”
“Jordan, you and the sheriff have got to do something about those teenagers parking out at my place every weekend. I mean, I understand hormones, but…”
I should have taken the bet. Still amused, Hollis set out on her own wandering path among the cars and around the building to the side entrance. It was not the most obvious location for a “front” door and was in fact one that would have hurt most businesses, but Jordan had told her this place made the best biscuits and gravy in four counties—and in the South, that was saying something.
Customers find your door when they really, really like what you’re selling them, even if you make them walk around overgrown shrubbery and wedge themselves in between improbably placed stacks of lumber, presumably for some reno project as yet unstarted.
“Ow!” And get stung by bees—
Hollis stared at the object she found sticking in her thigh and for an instant was aware of nothing except total incomprehension.
Then she got it.
She had time only to wish with all her heart and soul that she had taken the bet with Jordan and remained with him back at the car to collect her winnings.
And then the world spun wildly on its axis, and everything went black.
Dani turned off Marc’s portable phone and set it back on its base, seeing her fingers tremble. “Dammit. Bishop said Hollis and Jordan had gone out to get breakfast. Jordan called in not two minutes ago. Somebody stopped him in the restaurant’s parking lot to ask about something totally unimportant. Hollis went on. When he got inside, she was just…gone. No evidence of a struggle. Nobody saw anything.”
“It never fails to amaze me how nobody sees anything when something completely extraordinary happens,” Marc said, handing her a cup of coffee. “And yet how many UFOs do you suppose get reported every year?”
Dani appreciated the effort but refused to be sidetracked. “Why the hell didn’t I see this coming? Oh, yeah, I forgot—I did.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself.”
“Marc, I should have known how it would go. The vision kept changing, and every time the signposts were all but jumping up and down to get my attention. The different watches, warning me from the very beginning that time was important, that there was less of it than I thought. The baited trap, inescapable, unavoidable, waiting for us at the end of this. The sequence of potential victims baiting that trap, shifting easily no matter what I did, as if it hardly mattered which of them was there, Miranda or Paris or Hollis—”
“What?” he asked when she broke off.
“That was the biggest signpost of all,” she said slowly. “And I kept missing it.”
“Dani, what are you talking about?”
“The bait. It was Miranda even after Bishop made sure she was out of reach, even though it never felt right to me. That was bait for him, to keep him in this—and separated from Miranda. His half of the trap. That’s why he always leaves us in the vision dream, why he always goes alone into one side of the trap.”
“Separated from everybody else,” Marc said. “Weakened strategically.”
“Exactly. That’s partly what the trap—what this whole setup—was designed to do.”
“And the other part? The other side?”
“The side with the teeth. The side intended to capture prey for a psychic killer with his eye on someon
e else’s abilities.”
“Why a trap at all?” Marc said. “Why not just take what he wanted? The attack on you and Paris was nearly successful, so why not try that again?”
She frowned. “I think…I feel…his abilities are limited, just like every psychic’s are. So for him to be able to steal someone else’s abilities, maybe the conditions have to be right. Electromagnetic fields. Energy. That’s how he was able to try to take Paris’s abilities, because there was a storm threatening, and he was able somehow to tap into that. He needed the energy.
“And that explains the storm in my vision dream. It’s part of the trap. He needs energy outside himself in order to attack any of us.”
“It makes sense,” Marc admitted. “Must have frustrated the hell out of him that the weather didn’t cooperate. He leaves Boston knowing the hunters are on his trail, comes here to take Paris’s abilities—and can’t. You know, that could have been what triggered your first vision dream. He tried to get at Paris.”
“And wasn’t strong enough to register with either of us—consciously,” Dani agreed. “But my subconscious got it. And my abilities took over, trying to warn me. While he was figuring out what he needed, I was dreaming about a trap.”
“Maybe that’s why the murders here were so vicious,” Marc offered. “That was him, just pissed. No rain for weeks, no storms—no energy to attack in the way he needed to attack to get what he wanted.”
“And once his attack was delayed, then he knew he’d have to do something about the psychic hunters on his trail. I was right. He knew Bishop would be here, probably wanted him to be here. Bishop—specifically him. And specifically here, with Miranda far away and as separated from Bishop as she could be while both of them are still alive.”
“That connection of theirs?”
“That connection,” Dani said. “Like Paris and me, Bishop has another half. Together, he and Miranda are incredibly powerful. Alone, either one is a lot more vulnerable. The killer had to know Bishop would be on his trail. And because the bastard had to wait for conditions to be right, or wait to be able to create them himself, then he had to make damn sure his enemy was as weakened as possible.”
“So he took away Bishop’s other half. Without even lifting a finger against her.”
“I think so.” Dani drew a breath and let it out slowly. “I think even Bishop has been playing into the killer’s hands, reacting exactly as he was expected to react.”