by Cait London
She watched the ripples in the pond and waited for Owen to surface. How long had it been? A few minutes? Or just a few heartbeats? If only she’d had a chance to talk with Robyn privately. “I’m not coming to you, now or ever,” she challenged the voice. “This is where you held her, isn’t it? Right in this triangle of water, where you’re the strongest. Did you ever think that I might also be stronger in this triangle, strong enough to take you down, you bastard?”
Max started barking again, this time because Owen had suddenly surfaced. As he tossed his head, sunlight sparkled on the water as it spun away from him. Holding the laptop in one hand, he tossed the rake on to the shore with the other. “Got it.”
Then he spotted Leona. “What are you doing? Get out of the water!”
Leona looked down at her joggers beneath the murky surface, the mud swirling around her calves, her jeans wet. Without knowing it, she had moved into the pond. The mud seemed to be pulling at her, sucking her deeper into the water.
Unable to move, Leona felt the band of Owen’s arm cross her chest. As if outside her own body, she felt him lift and carry her to the lush bluegrass of the field. Once her feet touched the earth, Owen quickly scooped up his clothes. With them over his shoulder and the laptop and moccasins in one hand, he took Leona’s hand with his other and began hurrying toward the house. At the front porch, he dropped his clothes, putting the laptop beside them, then standing to grip Leona’s upper arms. He shook her gently. “Leona, come out of it.”
The icy chill seemed to crack around her, the shards flying off into the brilliant sunlight and leaving her free. “I’m fine.”
Tugging her close, he scanned the hillside. “This place isn’t good for you.”
Leona eased away, leaning over to scoop up Owen’s clothing, holding it to her chest. She didn’t want to leave any part of him unprotected now. “I felt him. Just here, just now.”
“There’s no one around, Leona.”
“I heard him say my name.”
“Janice, before she tried to kill herself, said something like that—that he’d whispered her name.” Owen retrieved the laptop, his powerful hands gripping it tightly, his knuckles going bone white beneath the skin, as if he wanted to crush the throat of anyone who tried to harm his sister.
“Triggers. I think that’s how he gets them to do something, when he’s not in actual contact. As a boy, he set up an image in my father’s mind. I’m just guessing but he could do the same with words and associations. He probably sets up a trigger word or phrase, something designed to create a specific action, like hypnotists might do. Anyone using that word could have set the affected person into doing what he wanted. In Montana, he may have primed Janice to walk into the water—just as she tried to do here—when she heard that specific word or phrase. I think that’s how he got the others to commit suicide.”
Leona glanced at the wet laptop in Owen’s hands. “Owen, Janice may have been set up to kill you when she pulled that gun on you in the barn. Was Robyn alone with Janice at any time before that?”
Owen nodded. “I had a lot to do, the night before the flight. Robyn didn’t make it easy—she argued every bit of the way, even wanted to come with us. Then she wanted to say a private good-bye to Janice. So yes, I did leave her alone with Janice.”
“Okay, then. That’s why your sister acted as she were on automatic pilot. Janice actually was. We already know he likes games.” Leona’s expression hardened. “Seduction can work two ways, though. Sometimes the prey can turn into the predator.”
“I don’t like the sound of that.” Owen frowned at her. “Don’t tell me that you think you’re going to take this guy on, Leona.”
“Someone has to get him out in the open. He wants me. I want him. From now on, it’s just which one of us is stronger. I think I can be. Something taken, something given. He’s afraid. I felt it just now, a bit of fear that wasn’t mine. Maybe now he knows that I saw him as a boy, and I know what he did. Owen, I think that he knows that I know about him, that he’s a Borg-descendant. That I know he killed my father.”
Owen shook his head and stared out at the bluegrass fields. The horses grazed peacefully, and the geese and ducks floated on that pond. The scene was at odds with the violence within him. Janice could have been primed to kill him and probably herself. “That’s a lot of knowing. Are you sure you’re not just jumping to conclusions or are you really sensing something?”
“A lot of it is guesswork. Sometimes it pays off. But I did get fear from his energy just now. I must have taken some of his energy at my shop that day. I didn’t know I had. Sometimes energy can be captured in little pockets, forgotten, then released at odd times. But I know more about him now. He’s not going to like someone else uncovering his dirty secrets.”
The hair on Owen’s nape lifted. The line of thought Leona was following now could get her killed; she was scaring him. “No, he’s not going to like you playing in his sandbox. I don’t like any of this. It’s dangerous for you. Just as dangerous as it was for Janice. No wonder there wasn’t any surveillance equipment in my house. He didn’t need it. He probably had Robyn doing his dirty work for him. She was probably working on Janice the whole time.” As Owen thought back to the hours he’d left Janice with Robyn, he was horrified. “Every time I left them alone, she could have been working on Janice.”
“Owen, don’t be so hard on yourself. I need you to think clearly. Exactly how did you hire Robyn?”
“We needed a nurse and a light housekeeper for the odd hours when I couldn’t be home, someone with flexible hours. When we were still in Montana, I placed an ad in the newspapers here. It was—it was at Janice’s suggestion. I thought it was a good idea. We’d had a mix of different people helping us through the years, mostly family, or people we’d known or who had been recommended through someone we knew. We didn’t know anyone here. Robyn answered the ad…I interviewed her over the phone. She seemed perfect, and qualified. Robyn said she had to e-mail her family frequently—some family illness was going on. She promised to keep her laptop from Janice, to keep it locked in her car. To my knowledge, Robyn always did. Now I question that.”
He placed the laptop on the porch as if he couldn’t bear to touch it. With his hands on his hips, Owen stared back at the pond.
Leona quickly gripped his arm. Owen had already shown signs of extrasensory perception, and he had the bloodline to do many illogical things. If he was feeling drawn to that pond, too, Leona would fight him every step. “Owen? Owen, do you feel anything about that pond? Are you—?”
“Hell, no. But I know I’d like to drown that bastard in that water.”
Relieved, Leona handed Owen’s clothes to him. “We could call the police and tell them about the camera at my house. Maybe they could get fingerprints or track down the buyer of that equipment.”
“The camera you spray-painted?” Owen slid on his jeans and moccasins, then shrugged on his shirt. Leona stood close and buttoned it for him. Smoothing the fabric over his chest, she felt the solid beat of his heart and relaxed slightly. There was no question in her mind that if Owen had not emerged from that pond, she would have gone in after him. “What do you think, Owen? Should we call the police?”
“That might be the right and logical thing to do. We could tell them about Vernon having access to our lives and about Sue Ann. We could do a lot of things. But we don’t know how far this ripples out, do we? And we’re not dealing with someone who is normal, are we?”
“You mean, an investigation could lead to another probing of my family? That I’ll be accused of not being normal and told that my hazy dreams are the visions of someone going insane, like my grandmother?”
Owen framed her face with his hands and looked down into her eyes. “If you’re going insane, then I am, too. I believe everything you’ve told me. But police investigations deal with reality. We’re not in the real-zone now.”
“We should go talk to Vernon. He’s a link in all of this somehow. And Owen? Do y
ou think it’s possible that Vernon is—”
“Let’s just hold off until we have more information. This bastard gets scared, and he could go underground. You said it was a big blond in your shop, someone worldly-looking. Vernon is definitely pure country-bred. I checked him out. He grew up here.”
Leona smoothed the shirt over his chest again and adjusted the collar. She loved touching Owen, enjoying the feel of his heartbeat running strong and even and safe beneath her hands. Standing on tiptoe, she whispered against his lips, “I think we should find a way to get this creep out in the open, don’t you?”
Owen watched Leona’s expression as she leaned back again and smoothed his hair. While he loved the attention, his senses were humming uneasily. At the moment, he didn’t quite trust Leona to keep herself out of harm’s way.
“You really want to set yourself up as bait, don’t you? No way.”
“Um, Owen?”
He was suspicious of Leona’s wide-eyed innocent look. “Huh?”
Leona glanced around the farm. “Unless someone drove her out here, her car would still be around, wouldn’t it? Do you think there would be anything in it?”
“I’d like to know where her laptop is, and anything else she might have had at my house. I checked her room right away—before the coroner came—and it was cleaned out…too empty. There was always a clutter of cassette tapes the few times I talked to her from her room’s doorway. I’d like to know what was on them, too.” Owen bent his head to give Leona a quick kiss. “I know just where she might have parked. Stay here.”
“Oh, no. You’re not leaving me out of this one.”
Owen and Leona walked to the opposite side of the pond from the house. An expert tracker with Max at his heels, Owen followed the trail of bent blades of bluegrass away from the pond. Behind a stand of brush, Robyn’s new, compact white sedan sat facing the pond, mud-splattered, the tires stuck deeply in the moist earth with the driver’s door open. The keys were still in the ignition.
“She must have hurried.” Owen gauged the distance to the pond. “She must have come in from that old farm road. She used to complain about the loud music coming from the kids’ cars, as they drove by. Seems like she drove straight for that pond, but got stuck. If she’d tried it the other way, she would have had to drive through the board fences. That farm road was the easiest route.”
Leona glanced around at the deadly triangle of the stream, pond, and river. “I can still feel him…or his psychic residue. I think he came to check on her—to see if she’d managed to kill herself. He might have been afraid that she’d live and expose him,” she whispered unsteadily, her senses jumping.
Max faced the river. He growled, his hackles raised, all four legs braced defensively.
“If he’s out there watching us, he probably came to gut the car. He’d want to clean out anything linking Robyn to him.”
Leona looked at the stream of mist that seemed to float from the pond toward her. “Owen, hurry.”
“Bastard,” Owen muttered as he slid into the car. He turned on the ignition, and the car sputtered to life. “The engine was working. There’s an opened box of crackers and duck food in here.”
Killing the engine, Owen took the key and opened the trunk. With Leona close at his side, he rummaged through it. “Nothing here.”
When he returned to the driver’s seat, Owen took the tape from the sound system. He grabbed a shoe box of tapes and medications from the passenger seat, then handed them to Leona. “Take care of these.”
“Leona…” The whisper circled her eerily. Leona’s senses stilled as it continued softly, “You know me, don’t you? You know what I can do? You know that you are mine, and that you’ll do what I say, don’t you?”
She scanned the brush and the trees, found no one near. She tried to breathe, her lungs crushed inside her chest. The chilling mist had reached her; it began to rise up her body, and she managed to whisper, “Owen?”
Max growled and clamped his teeth onto Owen’s jeans. The dog began to back up, trying to draw Owen from the car.
“Dammit. Stop it, Max. Leona, get him off me.” Owen bent to reach for something on the passenger’s floorboard. “Here’s her laptop.”
Leona wanted to cry out to warn him, but she couldn’t. Then suddenly, Owen turned to her.
The mist began to trail into the car, curling around Owen’s body. Terror clogged Leona’s throat. She wanted to move, to scream for Owen, but she couldn’t. She wanted to tell him that nothing could happen to him, that he was the other part of her soul and her heartbeat. She wanted to tell him she loved him. But the words lay trapped in her throat.
Owen suddenly sat up and turned to her. His expression was puzzled. “Leona? You just screamed? Why?”
Unable to speak, she looked down at the mist curling around her body. It seemed to be exploring her, sliding along her body almost sensually. Owen glanced at her, then at the mist filling the car, lying damp upon his skin. Cursing softly, he got out of the car and, gripping Leona’s upper arm, hurried toward the house, almost dragging her with him. “I’ve got Robyn’s laptop, her cassette player, and the tapes. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
When they reached the front porch, Leona pulled away to catch her breath. Her heart pounded from fear and from keeping up with Owen’s fast pace. She turned to see if she had passed from one dimension to another, from the unreal to the real.
When she surveyed the farm, the day was bright and scented of the coming fall. In midafternoon, the horses grazed peacefully in the September sunshine, the bluegrass lush in the fields.
“Are you all right?” Owen asked as he held the house’s front door for Leona.
Her mind on how Owen had thought she’d called to him, Leona watched Max walk into the house. She carefully replayed the scene by the pond. She was certain she’d said nothing; she’d been too terrified. Max’s tail brushed Leona’s leg and startled her. “I didn’t scream, Owen. I couldn’t move or speak.”
“I heard you. You were terrified. You called out to me. You told me that—”
“No, I definitely couldn’t say anything, but I was terrified—it knows you, Owen. It’s gotten to know how you feel, who you are—through me. Psychic energy is transferable, like lint catching on those nearby, it can capture anyone emotionally attached.”
Easing Leona inside the house, Owen firmly closed the door. He placed the laptops and the shoe box on the kitchen table. “Let’s get back to the part where you didn’t scream. Maybe you just didn’t think you did.”
“I would know, wouldn’t I?” In the aftermath of her fear, Leona shivered and wrapped her arms around herself. She went to the kitchen window that overlooked the pond. The surface wasn’t murky now, but golden in the sunlight; geese and ducks floated peacefully on top. “Do you think this is all in my mind?”
Owen’s look narrowed as he studied her; the way his head tilted with a challenge, set her off. “You do, don’t you?”
“Of course, it’s in your mind—and your senses. You’re a psychic, aren’t you?” He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Okay, I know something was going on out there. I know it because of how you react…. Your eyes just turned that gold shade. You’re getting mad now, aren’t you?”
He leaned back against the counter and watched as Leona ran water into the teakettle. She placed it on the stove, her movements jerky. Leona was obviously furious. Tearing open the cabinet, she grabbed two cups and placed them on the counter. “Yes, dammit, I’m mad…at myself. I got scared, and I let him have a little bit more of me, of my energy, and that’s why I’m mad. Because I didn’t focus. You were in that car. The mist was wrapping around you, and I lost it. Stop staring at me like that, as if you don’t know what to think.”
Owen shrugged and moved to the table. He stood as he sorted through the shoe box of tapes and medications. “I was just thinking of something else.”
“Like?” This time Leona challenged him, her hands on her hips.
He
studied the cassette tape in his hand. “I never heard music come out of Robyn’s room. But then, she had earphones….”
Owen thumbed through the tapes. Most were older, commercial and concerned self-improvement, balancing life, and building confidence. He glanced up at her. “I’d really like a good cup of loose tea. This bag stuff tastes awful. My laptop is shot, by the way.”
The teakettle hissed, but Leona didn’t care. She threw up her hands. “How can you think of tea at a time like this? There was a body in that pond this morning. All the information on your laptop is probably ruined, a gun is missing, and—”
“Take it easy. Nothing is ever gone. I’ll download information from my investment accounts, and the rest is backed up online. It just takes time to reconstruct. I thought you were supposed to be calm and cool.”
“Oh, I am…. Usually. You just smiled…. Why? There’s no reason to smile now. We’re in a bad, desperate, deadly situation here, Owen, and so are our families.”
“Uh-huh. That’s what it seems like. So you were worried about me, huh? When I was in the car? What were you thinking? I mean, other than you were scared.”
“I was just terrified, obviously. I heard him whisper my name. Rather, maybe he’s just placed the idea in my mind—that I’d heard him whisper.”
Owen looked at his fingers as they circled the cup’s rim. He seemed to be deep in thought. “Uh-huh. Nothing else? You weren’t thinking about anything else?”
Leona glanced at the muddy spots on her jeans, rubbing them as if she could erase what had happened. “I—I may have been thinking that Max could somehow sense what I could, an unseen danger. Maybe I was wondering how that all connects, the animal and the psychic. Is it important? What I was thinking?”
“Probably not. That’s a good note on Max, though. We might be able to use him to track this maniac down.”
Owen inserted a tape into the small cassette player. Immediately that low-pitched, soothing male voice Leona had heard at the pond began. The tone almost crooned, a mesmerizing softness. “You’re mine now, aren’t you, Janice? No one else but me is important to you. We’ve talked many times about how you ache for your parents, for your baby that never drew breath? You’ve told me all about how a man led you on. I would never hurt you. You can trust me, Janice. You are a part of me now. I can help you. Trust me. Everything will be fine, if you trust me.”