Blood Ties

by Kay Hooper

  “That’s a good thing,” Hollis said.

  “Yeah. But she didn’t respond when they tried to make her. Stimulus, they called it. Pain. She didn’t respond to pain.”

  “We’ll get her back, Quentin,” Hollis told him.

  Quentin looked like hell, his face haggard and eyes dark and shadowed with exhaustion, but he was at least clean and shaved due to one very determined nurse.

  “She said I couldn’t stink up the ICU,” he told them with a tinge of his normal humor. “She wouldn’t have it on her shift. I said I wasn’t letting go of Diana and she said fine, she had experience with sponge baths.” He paused, adding, “Damned if she didn’t give me one. Which is very disconcerting when you aren’t, you know, a patient.”

  “Or probably when you are,” DeMarco murmured.

  Hollis had to agree with him, but what she said aloud was, “Did you eat anything?”

  “Drank some soup.” He paused, added, “That’s one very determined nurse. Sophie. I asked and she said to call her Sophie.”

  “Well, I’m glad she took care of you.” Hollis exchanged a glance with DeMarco, then said, “I tried something earlier, when you were asleep. Maybe it helped a little, I don’t know, but we think it might work better this time.”

  Quentin frowned. “What did you try?”

  “To help her heal.”

  “Since when can you do that?”

  “I don’t know that I can. But I can heal myself. And Bonnie is a medium who can heal others.” Bonnie was Miranda’s sister. “So I figured it was worth a shot.”

  DeMarco said, “We think I got in the way before. So Hollis wasn’t able to reach Diana, at least not completely.”

  “But I felt something,” Hollis told Quentin. “Even with Reese’s shield sort of blocking me, I felt something. I want to try again.”

  After a moment, Quentin said, “That might not be too smart, Hollis.”

  She didn’t have to be a telepath to know what he meant. “Look, I know Bishop and Miranda have been worried about me. All these shiny new abilities I keep… growing.”

  “It’s a legitimate concern,” Quentin said slowly. “And if you’re trying to heal others now, that’s another whole new ability, coming awfully fast on the heels of the last one. Maybe too fast. You can push yourself too hard, demand too much of your senses. Your body. Your brain. It could be dangerous.”

  “With these extra senses of ours, that’s a danger we all face, all the time. But it’s no reason not to try, if there’s a chance it could help Diana. I want to do this, Quentin.”

  Quentin looked at DeMarco, who shrugged. “She’s determined,” he said. “I don’t think either one of us is going to talk her out of it.”

  “You’ll anchor her?”

  “Definitely.” DeMarco lifted one hand, showing Quentin that his and Hollis’s fingers were already laced together. “And, like you, I won’t let go. I may even be able to help, to … boost her signal, so to speak.”

  Quentin was still frowning. “I’m tired, and I know I’m not thinking clearly. But one thing I do know is that Bonnie can’t walk in the gray time, and to my knowledge she’s never tried to heal anyone who could. Hollis, this situation… It’s unique. I mean, you may or may not be able to heal, or help heal, Diana’s body. But if her spirit is in the gray time, if she’s left that door open only a little, then you could be drawn in there. And with your own energies focused on healing, especially if those energies are intensified by Reese’s … I don’t know what might happen.”

  “Neither do I.” She smiled wryly. “So let’s just do the thing and find out, okay?”

  He looked at Diana’s still face, then returned his gaze to Hollis and said simply, “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me yet.” She kept it light. “I may do nothing more than short out one of these machines or something.”

  “Sophie will have a fit,” he responded, obviously making an effort.

  “I’ll worry about that later too.” She smiled at him, then looked at DeMarco. “Remember, don’t block me. It took a while for you to retract that shield of yours so the world looks normal to me again, and I much prefer normal.”

  Quentin said, “What’re you talking about?”

  “It’s not important right now,” Hollis replied. “Listen, I have no idea if it’s even possible, but the three of us were all at Samuel’s Compound that last day, exposed to the weird energies there, and we were all sort of… connected. Maybe that can help us now. Maybe we can connect and build on one another’s abilities, like we did then.”

  “I have no idea how that worked,” Quentin confessed. “Bishop was sort of the linchpin, maybe because he was the strongest telepath.”

  “Then I nominate Reese to be our linchpin.”

  “Thanks a bunch,” DeMarco said. “Appreciate the honor, but I don’t have a clue how to do it.”

  Hollis didn’t allow that to slow the proceedings, because she was pretty sure that if Reese, at least, knew what she had very carefully not been thinking about during the last hour or so, he was liable to throw a protective wrench into the works. “Just everybody close your eyes and concentrate on focusing a bright, healing white light on Diana. I’ll do the rest. I hope.”

  Before either of the men could voice another protest, Hollis closed her own eyes, drew a deep breath, and placed her free hand across Diana’s forehead. It wasn’t where her injuries were—physically, at least—but Hollis was playing another hunch, this one that she might be able to do two things: help heal Diana’s body and help her find her way back to it.

  Before Reese or Quentin could stop her.

  She concentrated on doing the two very different things, aiming her own energy in a healing blast of white light even as she reached deeper, attempting to find a door she wasn’t even sure she would recognize if she fell through it.

  She felt the hot pulse of her energy rising, felt it flowing down her arm and through her hand into Diana’s body. And she knew, with a sense of excitement and satisfaction, that it was working.

  She was healing Diana. She was—

  She was falling. And landed with a mental, if not physical, thud.

  Ouch?

  “Hollis. Dammit, you shouldn’t be here.”

  Hollis opened her eyes and stared—for a moment dizzily—at Diana, as she sat on a bench in a really cold and creepy gray-time representation of Serenade’s Main Street. She had forgotten just how weird and otherworldly the place—time—was, even with her own mini-gray-time experiences of the last twelve hours or so.

  Not a place where one wanted to linger, oh, no.

  “Hello to you too,” she said. And then, cautiously, “Diana, you do know what’s happened, right?”

  “I was shot. Did I die?”

  Hollis was startled by the stark question. “No. No, you’re—I’m trying to help heal you now. So we can get you out of here and back to your body.”

  Diana shook her head slightly. “I don’t think that’s the way this is going to turn out.”

  “Of course it is. Quentin’s still holding on tight, and soon you’ll start to feel better. You’ll see.” She caught a flicker of distant movement from the corner of her eye and turned her head. “Hey, is that—”

  “Shhh. Don’t attract his attention. That’s the fake Quentin, and he’s looking for the door you just opened again.”

  “Diana—”

  “Hollis, it’s Samuel. And we can’t let him get out of here.”

  Serenade

  “What I keep coming back to,” Dean Ramsey said, “is why here? Why were we… led here, herded here, lured here—whatever. Why here?”

  “Because it’s a perfect shooting gallery?” Tony suggested. He was standing near the open door of the mobile command center, gazing out on a lamplit and mostly deserted Main Street, eerily empty on a cool Thursday evening in April. “Down in a valley, surrounded all the way by mountains that are just close enough for a really good sniper with a really good scope to get
off a few really good shots.”

  “He hasn’t shot into the town from the mountains,” Miranda reminded him. “Not yet, at least.”

  “Something to look forward to. Yay.”

  Jaylene said, “Okay, my question is, once we were here and he ramped up the action with his trusty rifle, why produce another tortured body? What’s the point of that? I mean, we’re here, we’re obviously not going to leave without doing our best to find this bastard, so why kill Deputy Silvers? Especially her. That’s two Pageant County deputies killed this week, and neither one of them was even a full-time cop. What’s the point of that if we’re the targets?”

  Miranda glanced at Sheriff Duncan, who seemed uninterested, adrift in a pain-filled world of his own, then slid her gaze to his chief deputy, Neil Scanlon. “Am I right in assuming you guys haven’t been making enemies of this sort lately?”

  He snorted. “Not lately—and not ever. Hell, this has always been a peaceful town. Until this shit started, there hadn’t been a murder within fifty miles for years.”

  “Yeah,” she said, “that’s what I thought.” She tapped a closed laptop on a built-in workstation beside her. “All the torture victims so far—with the exception of Deputy Silvers—connect in some way with past SCU investigations.”

  Tony turned, leaning a shoulder against the door frame as he looked at her. “So, if it’s us, why throw another body at us? A taunt? We’re right here and he can torture and kill under our very noses?”

  “Maybe. Also a kind of psychological torture. All of us, all the technology and expertise we can bring to bear on an investigation—and he sits out there deciding who lives and who dies. Maybe.”

  Alerted by something in her tone, Tony said, “You don’t think that’s it.”

  “I,” Miranda said slowly, “think we have two killers.”

  Tony glanced quickly at the sheriff and his chief deputy, noting that only the latter was even paying attention to the conversation. “It was always a possibility,” he agreed.

  “Yeah, well, with every… event that occurs, I’m more and more certain. I think there’s a cool-headed sniper out there, and I think there’s a twisted son of a bitch who enjoys torture. The sniper is the one planning things. The other one just likes to kill. That could explain Bobbie Silvers—if the torturer is somewhere close enough to have found a target of opportunity. All the deputies were moving around last night, trying to secure the town, check on people after the bomb and the shooting. Maybe she simply knocked on the wrong door.”

  Scanlon said, “Are you saying the son of a bitch lives here?”

  “I somehow doubt he’s camping in the woods. The kind of torture he’s been doing requires a quiet, private space. Most likely a cellar or basement. Probably not downtown, but close enough.”

  Scanlon said something violent under his breath. Mostly.

  Sheriff Duncan stirred and said, “I should check on Bobbie’s mother. Neighbors were staying with her, but…”

  Quietly, Miranda said, “There isn’t much more we can do tonight, Des, and most of your people have been up as long as mine have. Now that we have reinforcements from the Bureau and the state police, the rest of us should get some sleep. We’ll start fresh in the morning.”

  The sheriff got to his feet, unobtrusively helped by Scanlon. “Guess you’re right. Yeah. I’ll see you in the morning, then.”

  Scanlon followed his sheriff, murmuring as he stepped past Miranda, “I’ll see to it he gets home.”

  When the SCU agents were alone in the command center, Tony said, “Not that I’d ever second-guess you—”

  Miranda made a rude noise.

  He managed a faint grin. “Okay, so I do that. Why’d you tell them you were sure it’s two killers? I thought we were trying to keep that quiet. I’d bet my next paycheck that by dawn everybody in town will know it.”

  “Including our killers.” She nodded. “It’s time to shake things up a bit, put the sniper on notice that we know he isn’t out there alone. My guess, he has to keep some kind of leash on the other one. And maybe it’s slipping.”

  “Bobbie?”

  She nodded. “Bobbie wasn’t planned. Bobbie was a mistake. And so, I think, was Taryn Holder, the female victim found up in the mountains by Hollis and Diana. The victim we weren’t meant to find.”

  Jaylene was frowning. “But she has a connection to a past case. She stayed at The Lodge.”

  “Yeah, I’m wondering about that particular connection. The Lodge is a famous place in the area, drawing visitors from all around. She apparently went on spa trips a couple times a year at least, and that would be the location most well-to-do women in these parts would choose.”

  “Okay,” Jaylene said. “But if she just happened to get herself slaughtered by our twisted torturer, isn’t that stretching coincidence a bit too far?”

  “Maybe not. Look, I could easily be wrong. But I think we should check a little further into the background of Taryn Holder. She might have another connection we’ve missed so far. A connection to whoever killed her.”

  “You’re the boss,” Tony said.

  “Right now the boss needs to rest,” Miranda said, getting to her feet. “All of us do.”

  Dean was also on his feet. “I had a break this morning, so I’m good ‘til midnight,” he said. “I’ll walk you back to the B&B, if you don’t mind, and collect a couple of the agents having coffee and sandwiches there.” He nodded to Tony and Jaylene. “Your relief will be back here in fifteen.”

  “Good enough,” Jaylene said, and Tony nodded.

  Miranda and Dean were mostly silent on the walk back to the B&B, merely nodding to a few of the agents, deputies, and state cops they passed along the way. There were by now more than two dozen agents on the scene and an equal number of state cops. Added to everyone else already here…

  “We’re nearly tripping over one another,” Miranda murmured. “Patrolling the whole downtown area in pairs means there’s a hell of a lot of people wandering around out here tonight. Cable news is still camped just outside the perimeter, despite the warnings; keeping them out of the downtown area because it’s a crime scene won’t hold for long. Plus, there are a couple of really good reporters here now, and the exposure they can provide will only make him more cocky. If we don’t lock this thing down fast, we won’t have a hope in hell of stopping the carnage.”

  “Then that’s what we’ll do.”

  They were silent for the remainder of the walk to the B&B. It was nearly dark when they got there. Bright porch lights already burned, and through the screen door they could hear the low hum of conversation as agents and cops took advantage of their hostess’s offer to serve coffee and sandwiches to the troops. Instead of entering through the front door, they slipped around to the darkened rear stairs that led up to the second-floor balcony.

  Miranda went up, followed by Dean, and knocked lightly on the door to her suite before going in. “We’re home,” she called quietly.

  Dean Ramsey came out of the bathroom, holstering his gun. “Damn, you’re quiet as cats. I barely had time to duck into the bathroom.” He stared at his double, shaking his head unconsciously. “Could you de-glamour yourself, please?”

  “Don’t use a magick term. This isn’t magick.”

  “It sure as hell looks like magick.”

  “Like everything else, it’s just energy. And a shift in perspective.”

  “Well, could you please tell Ruby to cut it out, or shift it the other way, or whatever it is she’s doing? Because looking at a mirror image talking back to me is creepy as hell.”

  “Sorry.” Thanks, Ruby. You can let go now.

  There was a peculiar sort of shimmer in the air—or so it seemed—and Bishop stood there.

  Dean shook his head. “That little girl has a scary gift.”

  Sober, Bishop said, “It’s powerful, all right, even more than it was a few months ago. But I don’t want to put too much strain on her by having her hold it unnecessarily.”
>
  “So I get to be me?”

  “If you don’t mind. Did you get any sleep?”

  “I caught a nap.”

  “Good. You’re on until midnight. Go back down the outer stairs and in the front. You’re here to pick up a couple of agents to relieve Tony and Jaylene in the command center.”

  “Copy that. And tomorrow?”

  “I’ll let you know in the morning.”

  “Okay. You two try to get some rest, huh? Even if all goes according to your plan, tomorrow’s gonna be a real bitch.”

  “Good night, Dean,” Miranda said.

  “‘Night.” He slipped out onto the balcony, closing the door behind him.

  Miranda locked the door, unfastened her vest and dropped it into a chair with a faint grimace, and went into Bishop’s arms. “God, I’ve missed you,” she said.

  He held her tightly, nuzzling his face into her neck. “I’ve missed you too, love. But it’s nearly over now.”

  “You’ve talked to Gabe and Roxanne?”

  “We managed to meet up just after I went out there as Dean.”

  Miranda nodded. It was normal for her to communicate with him telepathically a great deal when they were alone. But not this time. “What about Galen?”

  “I hate not warning him,” Bishop admitted quietly. “Hate not telling him what we know now. But it could be the only edge we’ll have tomorrow.”

  “He’ll forgive us. I hope. And Bailey?”

  “She knows. It goes against the grain for her to leave Ruby unshielded, but there’s no other way. Powerful as she is, Ruby won’t be able to maintain the illusions we’ll need tomorrow if she’s behind Bailey’s shield.”

  Miranda drew back just far enough to look up at him. “As much as she’s our edge, Ruby is also a potential danger. To us—and to herself. Galen knows what she can do, so they have to be wondering where she fits in.”

  “Maybe not. Bailey says Galen’s locked up tight. Maybe tight enough.”

  “And if not?”

  “The unpredictable variable. There’s always at least one.”

  She nodded. “Brisco?”

  “On his way to the hospital. Maybe there by now. I had a slight head start only because my jet was fueled and ready to go.”