by TL Schaefer
I thought of Wes and everything he’d taken from me—and given—over the past week. And as I did, realization, cold and sickly, swept through me.
I’d used the word anticipated. The one word in the English language that meant more to me today than it had yesterday.
Shaking, I reviewed my life as if through a long-distance lens, and what I saw scared the living crap out of me.
I saw myself picking exactly the right moment to walk into the blizzard, fleeing CASI. Breaking into a house abandoned for the holidays, but still stocked with food and blankets. Moving from alley to alley once I reached Denver, as if directed by an unseen force, only steps ahead of CASI. Viewed again the semi that had taken me from Denver to Phoenix, and how I seemed to have been waiting for just that one.
The visions of my actions over the past ten years began to flip by in rapid succession like a child’s storybook, chilling me as I saw their import.
Picking up a camera when I couldn’t afford it, as if drawn by a magnet. Signing the papers for the very loft I now sat in, when it looked like a heap ready for demolition. Before the Deep Ellum revitalization had taken place. Before this place became worth four times what I’d originally paid for it.
Hooking up with first the sheriff’s office, and then DPD, a job appearing exactly when I needed it.
Choosing men who weren’t a threat to my solitary existence...men who fulfilled a need and little else.
I remembered avoiding the things I sometimes saw on the blurry edges of auras, the things I didn’t want to see or know. As I did, I wondered if those shadowy specters hadn’t been more than I’d originally thought. Had they been a vision of things to come?
Brian hadn’t been very far off target, questioning my paternity. Wes and I shared the same power, even if we weren’t related.
And I’d been unconsciously trying to anticipate the reactions of the man I loved. A Null.
“Brian,” I took a shaky breath and paused before continuing. “Please call me when you get this message. I think I have something on Wes.”
I turned back to my computer and continued transcribing. As I did, my mind whirled, trying to remember everything Wes had told me about his training. While we’d never talked much about our respective gifts, discussing what they’d been putting us through hadn’t been the same.
An hour later, when my cell rang, it froze me for a moment. I swallowed and picked up the phone. I didn’t have the guts to look at caller ID.
“I don’t know what the hell you did, Covington. He won’t tell me, but you will.” Foudy. Her voice rang with contempt and righteous anger. Too much anger. Something was up with Foudy. Great, just what I needed, more on my plate.
“That’s between Brian and me,” I replied, keeping my own voice quiet. “But after he left I came up with something.” I paused. “I’d like to see you both, but I’ll understand if Brian won’t come.”
She was silent for a long, tension-filled moment. “I’ll be there. I’m not making any guarantees about Roney.”
“That’s all I’m asking.” I disconnected the call and put the phone down with shaking fingers. I stood to make a pot of coffee...not that any of us needed it.
When Foudy knocked twenty minutes later, she was alone. I was defenseless, my glasses sitting on the kitchen counter. It took her all of about thirty seconds to notice the difference in my eyes...and see the similarity to Wes’s.
“You played us, you bitch!” She swung, all pretense of cop gone. Her right fist connected with my jaw, surprising the hell out of me and knocking me back on my heels. She was freakishly strong for a soccer mom. I ducked the next one and dropped to the floor, hooking out my leg in an arc that dumped her on her ass. She hit hard, and it took the steam right out of her. Her eyes cleared, and I saw surprise sweep over her face, as if she couldn’t believe what she’d done.
Hell, I couldn’t either, even given the weird vibes she’d been giving out the last day or so. Was she starting to nut up over this? And if she was, what in the hell could I do about it?
Then Brian was standing between the two of us, and Foudy climbed to her feet shakily. I stayed in my crouch, ready to take her down again if need be, even if Roney was a human wall. I didn’t know if he was protecting her or me. Probably the latter.
Brian reached down to help me to my feet. I took his hand wordlessly, but ached inside as his familiar touch ignited a flame I’d never feel again, at least not on the level we had last night and this morning. The adrenaline spiking through my system leveled out, and I had to force myself to release him.
I walked to the kitchen and poured three cups of coffee, then grabbed a dishtowel, fished out some ice, and laid it against my jaw before I turned to face them. I cut a glance at Foudy and nodded my head. She responded with a dip of her own. She’d been dying to take a swing at me, even if she hadn’t realized it, and I’d been waiting for a chance to dump her on her ass. We were even-steven now, though my jaw throbbed like a mother. I’m sure her butt was similarly bruised. We were more alike than I wanted to admit, and I’m sure she felt the same way since she’d worked whatever it was out of her system. Now we could get down to business.
“I realized after Brian left this morning that I’d been trying to anticipate his actions. Like Wes would have. And then I started thinking. I’ve been doing it since I left CASI ten years ago. The choices I’ve made have been too lucky to be coincidence.” I strode to the printer and pulled out the list of things I’d “stumbled” into over the years. “In black and white, it’s pretty convincing.”
They scanned my recollections, and when Foudy raised her head, her gaze had gone calculating. “So what do you want?”
“I need to go back to all of the crime scenes.”
“Why? You’ve already been to two of them. Maybe three, if we count Johnson.”
“Shush, Monica,” Brian said, the first words he’d spoken since he stepped across my threshold. “We both know Burke was the do-wrong, not Sara.”
I nodded in acknowledgement of his point and kept the small smile at her words off my lips. Just because we’d gotten it out of our system didn’t mean there wasn’t still some animosity there. “Because at the time I wasn’t looking for what I might see now.” I kept my eyes on the opening of Brian’s dress shirt, refusing to meet his eyes. Maybe later I’d have that kind of courage, but not now. And what did that say about me? I could take a punch from Foudy, but not meet the eyes of the man who I’d spent hours coming undone with? “I didn’t want to go on my own, or cut you out of it.”
“And what do you think you’ll find at the scenes?” Foudy’s voice was frosty. But at least she was being responsive. Sorta.
“Maybe nothing,” I admitted. “But the possibility exists that I can figure out where he’s going to go next. I wasn’t trained for it, but I’ve obviously been using that talent for years now.”
“Or maybe you were trained, and they didn’t tell you.” The observation came from, surprisingly, Foudy. “This all may still be crap, but it’s more than we’ve got to go on now.”
“Before we leave, did Amy or the cabbie know where she’d been held? If I can look around there, I’ll get a much better read since it’s so fresh.”
“No,” Foudy shook her head. “He blindfolded her, dropped her off in front of the Galleria. Paid the driver enough to get her here with a generous tip.”
“He followed them.” I was sure of what I said. I may have been a basket case when it came to my love life, but this I could do, and dammit, I would.
“What?” asked both Brian and Foudy simultaneously.
“He wouldn’t have trusted the cabbie to get her to my place, not in today’s world. Remember, he’s an FBI profiler. So he followed, and let the cabbie know he was doing it. And he called us while he was doing it.”
“Damn, she’s probably right,” said Foudy, disgusted. “Burke didn’t touch her, just scared the crap out of her. She said it, and the physical exam backs it up.”
; “So, are you coming or not?” I asked, knowing that even if they cut me loose, I’d still go after Wes with everything I had. Given the look that passed between the two of them, they knew it too.
“Don’t hold anything back this time, Wonder Girl,” Foudy said as she walked to the door.
I shrugged into a windbreaker, and Brian didn’t say a word.
There was nothing left at either of the first two crime scenes. It had been too many days. Hiram’s place was a bust as well, but at least there was a trace of Wes still lingering in the etheric.
But the fourth kill spot yielded much better results.
Wes’s aura hung on the air. I walked under the still-hanging crime scene tape and took a good long look, then closed my eyes, fiddling with a strand of my hair as I did.
I’d never tried anything like this before, but it seemed natural.
As soon as I did, I got a fuzzy visual, more of a feeling than anything else. “He’s grown more powerful now, has more talent than before. He convinced those people to strip down somehow. They neatly folded their own clothes and waited for him to butcher them. Except for the pregnant girl. She had power, and even if she couldn’t go against his compulsion, knew what he was doing. He posed all of them except for her, mainly to shock, to titillate.” Shaken, I opened my eyes and stared hard at his aura. The thought it was Wes’s made me nauseous. He’d been my best friend, my lifeline. And now he’d become this.
When I knew Foudy had opened her mouth to speak, even though she was standing behind me, I held up a hand.
There was something there, right on the edge. I couldn’t quite grasp it. It wasn’t a picture, per se, but more of a sensory image. Whatever it was, it was close, geographically speaking.
“He hasn’t gone far, not to either of the coasts, maybe not more than four or five hours away. Probably less. It’s another metro area.”
I turned back to them, dropping my glasses in place, and walked to sit on a retaining wall. “I’ve never looked at the perp, only the victim. I didn’t know I could.” I massaged my temples, then held a hand over my roiling stomach. “It never mattered this much before.
“I think if I’d taken a closer look at your scene, Foudy, I would have seen that the girl was gifted, like Amy, and probably her unborn child, as well. He couldn’t take the chance with two of them. But as far as we know, they were the only talented people he killed here in Dallas. The rest were a message...to someone.”
“Jesus.” Foudy made it sound like a curse. “If you’re right, that means we’ve gotta look at Fort Worth, Austin, San Antonio, Albuquerque, Oklahoma City, Tulsa and maybe Lubbock, depending on what we’re considering metropolitan.” She began walking to the car, mumbling under her breath.
I dropped my head and sat there, not sure what Brian would do. When his feet came into my vision, I stood and looked over his shoulder.
“Thank you for that, Sara.” His voice was pitched low and made my toes curl.
“It’s important to me, too, you know. Maybe even more so than to you.”
I felt, rather than saw, his nod.
“No contacts now?” Brian asked, tipping my chin up. I met his eyes for the first time since this morning, and in them, I saw understanding, but no forgiveness.
I shook my head, caught by his gaze. I almost opened my mouth to ask why it was such a big deal, why it was like someone had set his shorts on fire when he saw the true color of my eyes, why we couldn’t go back to the way it was a few short hours ago.
Anger, turbulent and raw, began to fan through me. Why was I the bad guy here? But all of those thoughts and my anger were whisked away by his cold, bland tone. A tone I’d never, ever wanted to hear in his voice.
“Good.” He dropped his hand.
I turned away quickly, before he could see the tears forming in my eyes. Whether they were from anger or sorrow, I sure as hell didn’t know.
Chapter Fourteen
Before
Carl, the squicky orderly, hadn’t strapped me in tight enough, and in the brief moment our eyes met, I saw that he hated what he was doing, specifically what he was doing to me. The slack in my restraints certainly wasn’t a conscious decision on his part; instead I wanted to think some latent instinct guided him. And then the drugs were slipping into my system, and I didn’t care.
The electrode leads were attached interminable minutes...or hours...later. I opened my eyes and saw that it wasn’t Carl, but Green who performed the procedure, and the pleasure it gave him was evident in his gaze. Sadistic bastard.
As I swam farther toward true consciousness, I knew it’d be different that day. Green would make sure I was fully cognizant before zapping me; he wanted to ensure I was in exquisite misery. Lucky me.
“You could have been something, Christie.” He chastised me with a paternal tone, a direct contrast to the avarice in his eyes. He stepped to my right and began fiddling with the knobs and buttons on the bastardized EKG. “But no, you and Burke couldn’t play by the rules. Couldn’t be bothered to see CASI as a tool for the greater good.”
“More like for the greater profit...yours,” I rasped, my mouth dry as a desert. As I spoke, I rotated my left wrist and slipped it from the restraints. Turn your back, turn your back, turn your back, I chanted silently. He did.
I ripped the lead off my left temple and fisted it in my hand, knowing beyond a doubt that he was going to torture me, yes, and then he was going to kill me. The tone of his words said it as clearly as his sickly aura. It wouldn’t take much to fry my brain, and he was planning on doing it, as soon as he got the most pleasure from my agony.
He leaned over me. “I thought about playing with you for hours, listening to your screams, but I have better things to. Like move on to your friend Wes. But first I want to see your face when you die, you interfering little bitch.”
The controls were in his hands as he leered at me, the embodiment of malice. If I was going to do this, my timing had to be absolutely perfect.
His thumbs moved to the “go” switch as I clenched my fingers around the lead. As his finger began to depress the simple little piece of plastic that would end my life, I lunged and slapped the lead against his temple.
Electricity streaked through me, both agony and relief at the same time. Green screamed above me, his eyes bulging, his tongue lolling out as the same voltage powered through his body. He gave a last gurgle before collapsing in a crumpled heap at the side of the bed.
Now—Wednesday, 3:00 p.m.
“We need to find where he kept Amy. I need to get inside there,” I said from the backseat, having regained my composure. At this point, finding Wes could be my only concern. Brian’s irrational reaction to me, to us, was his load to bear now. I may have lost my heart to him, but I wouldn’t go crawling to him on hands and knees. I wasn’t the only one in the wrong here.
“What do you suggest?” Foudy asked from behind the wheel, and for once her voice wasn’t sarcastic or overtly hostile. “She said she was blindfolded when she went in and out.”
“If she and her family will allow it, we need to put her under, have her describe the sounds, the smells, how long it took to get to the Galleria, that sort of thing.”
“I should have thought of that,” Brian remarked from the front.
“Why? Until right now, we didn’t know I’d be able to pull anything from the scene. It might have yielded something forensic, but given who we’re dealing with, I seriously doubt it. The only thing we’re gonna get is what I can see and sense.”
“I’ll ask,” said Foudy, flipping open her cell phone.
I stared through the windshield, trying not to remember the expression on Brian’s face a few minutes ago. I’d screwed up, and it wasn’t something he’d easily forgive. The worst of it was, it wasn’t my similarity to Wes that had enraged him, but the fact I’d lied to him, even if I hadn’t known I was doing it. That pissed me off more than a little, but every time I felt a surge of anger, sadness that something so good could be derailed
by something so small overwhelmed it. But that was the way I wanted it, right? Me, back to flying solo.
I was snapped back into the present by Foudy’s voice. “They’ll do it, but her dad wants to be there.” She turned to Brian. “Is Sanders on duty today?” she asked, referring to the department psychologist. He nodded.
“Good,” she said, and then we were pulling into headquarters.
I stiffened. I’d been so lost in my own little world, I hadn’t realized we weren’t going back to my place. So much for my powers of perception...or anticipation. I met Foudy’s eyes in the rearview.
“Amy wants you there, too, Wonder Girl. After our little knee-jerk the other day, she doesn’t trust us as far as she can throw us.”
I nodded, suddenly so weary I had to force my fingers to close on the door handle. I climbed out and pasted a smile on my face.
“Don’t, Sara,” said Brian, suddenly at my side. “Amy will know you’re putting on a front. Everyone will.”
“You mean they don’t already?” I asked and was immediately sorry for my arch tone.
The ghost of a smile flickered at his lips. “That’s more like it.”
Davis met us at the door, ushering us into his office without a word. As soon as he closed the door, I reached into my back pocket and pulled out the shield and ID and set them on his desk.
“I think we all know that me representing the department wasn’t what you wanted.”
Davis eyeballed me for a long moment. “Actually, it is. Sit down, Sara. Or maybe I should call you Christie?”
I sank into the chair on legs as limp as noodles. Brian and Foudy settled in on either side, effectively trapping me, even if their intent wasn’t conscious.
Davis strode to his desk and settled in, pinning me in place with his eyes. “We ran your prints after we searched your place. Not immediately, of course, since you came back clean on everything else. Imagine my surprise when the local database came up totally empty. I mean, you should have been printed years ago, or at some point over the course of your employment. So I dug deeper and found you in, of all places, the government database, listed as AWOL. AWOL, of all things, and for over ten years. Now I can do math as well as the next man, and I know for darned tootin’ you’re not old enough to have gone Absent Without Leave, at least not with any organization that was on the up-and-up. With that and our best suspect in these killings being an FBI agent, I thought it best to keep my trap shut. But I’m getting tired of it, and I want answers, now.”