Forbidden Territory

by Paula Graves

  He bent closer, trying not to disturb the shattered glass on the floor. The fragment looked like leather—from a glove?

  Panic buzzed down his spine. He pushed the fear away and forced himself to focus. There’d been an intruder. There was blood—probably from the perp, he reassured himself, looking at the broken glass.

  But where was Lily?

  There was no way the intruder could’ve gotten through that window with Lily. If she were conscious, she’d have been kicking and screaming. And if she were unconscious, she’d be too unwieldy to pull through such a small space.

  She had to be here somewhere.

  He retraced his steps, following the blood spatter. At the door to the men’s bathroom, he again noted the extra blood outside the door. He gave the door a push.

  It didn’t budge.

  “Lily?”

  A jingling noise startled him. He whipped his gun up.

  A tall, thin black man dropped his key ring to the floor with a clatter and lifted his hands, his eyes wide with shock.

  McBride lowered his weapon and flashed his shield. “Police. Got a key to this bathroom?”

  LILY HAD BARELY registered the sound of McBride’s voice outside the bathroom when the door in her mind exploded open, sucking her through the portal into raw fear edged with the coldest, blackest darkness she’d ever known. Emotions battered her—terror, despair, guilt, grief, hate. Darkness filled her lungs and seeped into her skin, covering her, drowning her.

  A woman’s voice inhabited her mind so completely that the words she muttered seemed to be her own. “She’s gone, McBride. Clare’s gone. I can’t find her. Clare!”

  Lily sobbed with anguish. “Oh, Clare, my baby!”

  She felt hands on her shoulders, hot against her freezing flesh, dragging her from the whirlpool of grief. Eyes opening, she saw McBride’s face close to hers. She clung to him as he drew her out of her dark vision, gasping for air as the blackness released her from its grasp.

  But the anguish remained, pouring out in a tormented cry. “She’s gone, McBride. Clare’s gone!”

  MCBRIDE RELEASED Lily’s arms and staggered backward into the bathroom wall. The room swam as he stared into her vacant eyes, his ears ringing with her anguished words.

  She’s gone, McBride. Clare’s gone!

  The voice had been Lily’s, but the tone, the inflection, the anguish had been Laura’s. Grief had etched his late wife’s words into his soul. There could be no mistake.

  He barely heard the janitor’s voice. “Good Lord, Lily!”

  A few feet away, Lily bent over the urinal, retching and crying. The janitor hovered over her, waving his hands ineffectually, apparently unsure what to do.

  Battering down grief to the dark place inside him, McBride walked to the sink, wet several paper towels and took them to Lily, who hung over the urinal, fighting dry heaves.

  He crouched next to her and bathed her flushed face.

  “It was the man who ran me off the road,” she said.

  McBride sat back on his heels. “Are you sure?”

  “He said I didn’t get the message that time, so he decided to deliver it face-to-face. Did you see him?”

  “Just a glimpse of his car.” He brushed her sweat-dampened hair away from her cheeks, looking for injuries. “Did he hurt you? There was blood—”

  “I think he put his hand through the lunchroom door.”

  DNA, McBride thought, trying to focus on his job. He’d get the crime scene unit to gather samples. “He left his mask behind. Did you hit him with pepper spray?”

  She nodded.

  He gently wiped her mouth. “Did he say why he was here?”

  “He wants me to stay away from the case.” She shivered.

  McBride slipped his arm around her to warm her, although he felt so cold inside he wasn’t sure it would do much good. He helped her stand and led her out of the bathroom into the dark hallway.

  She wrapped her arms more tightly around her trembling body. “I’m sorry I’m not much help,” she murmured.

  Torn between wanting to hold her and wanting to run as far away from her as he could get, McBride compromised by doing neither—and doing his job. “Did you get a look at him?”

  “Before he entered the building. He’s tall, about your size.” Her teeth chattered. “He already had the mask on, so I didn’t see his face or his coloring, except he was Caucasian. I wasn’t close enough to see the color of his eyes except when he caught me in the cafeteria, and then it was too dark.”

  “He caught you?” The thought of the masked man touching her sent rage flooding through him.

  She rubbed her upper arms. “I was running from him. He grabbed me and pinned me against the wall.”

  McBride reached for her. She wrapped her arms around his waist and pressed her face to his throat.

  The janitor cleared his throat. “I’m gonna check and see if Mabel’s all right. We’ll call the police.”

  “Ask for Captain Vann in the detective bureau,” McBride said. “Say McBride told you to call and that it’s connected to the Walters kidnapping.”

  The janitor’s eyes widened. “I’ll do that.”

  McBride cradled Lily’s face between his hands, searching her pale face. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  She nodded. “I’m just a little shaky.”

  He had a feeling Lily wasn’t shaken nearly as much by the intruder as by whatever the hell had happened in that bathroom, when she’d cried to him in Laura’s grief-stricken words.

  Had she really seen that horrible scene from his past?

  No. It could have been a calculated guess. That was the game the phonies played, wasn’t it? Take a few facts, make some savvy guesses and play it up big time.

  He’d seen it before.

  But how could Lily have known about Clare? From newspaper archives? Could she have pieced things together, made some smart guesses and created a scenario to match past reality?

  No. Lily wasn’t that cruel. She wasn’t playing games.

  But if she wasn’t, then she was telling the truth about her visions. Something McBride wasn’t ready to believe.

  THE BLUE GLOW OF streetlamps poured through the windows of McBride’s office, holding back the darkness but not the late autumn chill. Shivering, Lily leaned back from McBride’s desk and rubbed her burning eyes. He was in the captain’s office across the hall, conferring with his task force. He’d apologized for not being able to take her straight home. “We have to go over everything that’s happened today.”

  She’d waved off his apology. “Go.”

  Now she was beginning to miss him. She was safe enough—who would come after her in a station full of armed cops?—but the silence was starting to get to her.

  So it was with relief that she heard the door across the hallway open and footsteps move toward McBride’s office. McBride entered the room, closing the door behind him. “You holding up?”

  She nodded, wishing he would touch her. She needed to feel his hand on her skin, reassuring her that everything was all right.

  He crouched beside her, placing his hands on her knees. She shivered, her body leaping in response to his light touch. “Let’s get you home.”

  “Agent Brody wanted to talk to me, didn’t he?” She wished McBride would kiss her. The heat of his mouth over hers would chase away the chill that had settled into her bones.

  “I told Brody it could wait.” He touched his lips to her forehead, then pulled her out of the chair and into his arms. Bending his head, he kissed her lightly. “We’ll stop by my place so I can get some clothes, and then I’ll take you home.”

  She looked up, trying to read his expression. Though his kiss had been sweet, she’d detected a hint of distance in his posture. No big surprise; he’d been shaken by what had happened today. By her ordeal, certainly, but also by what had occurred when he’d found her in the bathroom.

  She would never forget the look on his face when she’d surfaced from h
er hellish vision with another woman’s words on her lips. For a moment, he’d seemed like a dead man, eyes empty, soul vacant. He had recognized the words, the pain.

  Tomorrow, she decided, she’d make him tell her about Clare.

  MCBRIDE SLEPT WITH LILY that night. Just slept, neither of them thinking about passion after the day’s ordeal. McBride woke every few hours, unable to sleep for very long before being awakened by dark, twisted nightmares he didn’t dare remember in the light. Each time, he found Lily sleeping peacefully beside him, her cats curled behind her like living bed warmers.

  When he woke for good around 6:00 a.m., Lily was awake, sitting next to him with the cats in her lap. She greeted him with a sleepy smile. He sat up, rubbing his eyes. “What’re you doing up so early?”

  “I still work for a living.”

  He shook his head. “You’re not going back there today.”

  “I have to go back sometime.”

  “Not today. You’re exhausted.”

  “I’m fine.” She cocked her head. “You look wiped, though.”

  He grinned. “I always look this bad.”

  “Not always,” she murmured with a slight arch of her eyebrows and a devilish grin. “Sometimes you’re almost okay-looking. I live for those moments.”

  He grinned at her. “Sweet-talker.” He started to lean toward her when his cell phone shrilled. Groaning, he grabbed it from the night table. “McBride.”

  It was Captain Vann. “Just got a call from Walker County. They’ve got a juvenile Jane Doe, red hair, blue eyes, about five or six years old.”

  McBride’s stomach sank. “How fresh?”

  “Under twelve hours, they think.”

  Abby Walters, he thought immediately.

  “They’re e-mailing us the morgue photos in about half an hour,” Vann said. “I’d like the whole task force here, just in case.”

  “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.” McBride hung up the phone and looked at Lily. She gazed at him, her brow wrinkled with concern. He tried to keep his expression neutral, but she saw through him.

  Her face went white. “Abby?”

  McBride sat beside her and took her hand. Her fingers were icy. “Walker County cops have found a juvenile Jane Doe. They’re e-mailing photos in a little while. The captain wants the task force present.”

  She shook her head mutely.

  “It might not be her,” he said, wishing he believed it.

  She nodded but didn’t look convinced. “Go on. I’ll get one of the FBI agents outside to drive me to work.”

  McBride stroked her hand. “You can’t go back to school today. You’ll just bring the press flocking there, disrupting the students.”

  She sighed in frustration, but he could see her accepting the inevitable. “Okay. I’ll call Carmen.”

  Lily walked McBride to the door. “Phone me when you know something.”

  He kissed her brow. “I will. Try not to borrow trouble.”

  As he was getting into his car, his cell phone rang. It was Special Agent Cal Brody. His voice was grim. “I just got the message. Think it’s her?”

  “I hope to God not.” McBride cranked the engine, steeling himself for what was about to come.

  THE PHOTOS LOADED SLOWLY on the computer screen, revealing pixel by pixel the harsh face of death. Though he sat in the middle of a climate-controlled police station, McBride could feel the cold air of the morgue in the images, felt it seep under his jacket, spreading chill bumps across his flesh. He studied the pictures, forced himself to be thorough, before he turned away from the screen. “It’s not her.”

  He got up and paced across the room, breathing deeply to drive out the imagined odor of death. He leaned against the door frame, longing for a double bourbon straight up, though he hadn’t had a drink in years.

  Special Agent Brody joined him. “Got a cigarette?”

  “Don’t smoke.”

  Brody’s grin was horrible. “Neither do I.”

  McBride rubbed his face, unable to escape the image of that tiny white body lying on the metal slab. “You have any clue who that little girl could be?”

  Brody shook his head. “Maybe she hasn’t been reported missing yet. The M.E. says it looks like she was raped and strangled.”

  McBride closed his eyes. Sharp, dark pain ate at his gut.

  “Did Walters know about this call?”

  “No.”

  “Good.” McBride crossed the room to Theo’s desk. His colleague looked up at him, silent compassion warming his dark brown eyes. “Theo, give Walker County a call and let them know that’s not our girl.”

  He gave a nod and picked up the phone.

  “I’ve got some new stuff on Paul Leonardi.” Brody followed McBride back to his office. “Looks like his alibi is solid. We’ve tracked down people at every place he gave us, and between their register receipts and their personal memories, everything checks out.”

  “Damn.” McBride dropped into his chair.

  “What about the woman?” Brody added.

  McBride slanted a look at the FBI agent. Brody’s expression was hard to read, but he already knew the man shared his skepticism about all things paranormal. “I don’t think she knows anything we can use.”

  “I meant, what about her as a suspect?”

  McBride picked up the bottle of antacids on his desk, shaking a couple straight into his mouth. “She didn’t call herself. She didn’t drive herself off the road, and she didn’t attack herself at the school yesterday.”

  “She could have an accomplice.”

  McBride couldn’t argue. Lily’s part in this whole mess was the one thing he couldn’t make sense of. How was she involved? If she wasn’t in on the kidnapping, why were people trying to hurt her? Because they believed she really was a psychic and were afraid she’d figure out who they were?

  He rubbed his aching temples. “Nothing about her adds up.”

  “I’m just saying, it’s awfully damn convenient that she seems to be right where the action is, every time.” Brody gave him a hard look before going to talk to Captain Vann.

  As the rest of the task force dispersed to their planned duties for the day, McBride picked up the phone and called Lily. She answered on the first ring. “It’s not her,” he said.

  He heard her soft exhalation of relief. But a moment later, she said, “But it was somebody.”

  “Listen, I’m going to have to be here awhile longer. I’ll call you later.” He hung up, running a hand over his eyes.

  Just hearing her voice tempted him to race back to her house and her waiting arms, but Brody was right. Lily was the big unanswered question sitting right in the middle of his investigation, and until he made sense of her part in the case, he had a feeling they’d never find out what had really happened to Abby Walters.

  McBride grabbed Brody as he was about to head out. “You going to see Walters?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll drive.” Resolutely putting Lily out of his mind, McBride followed the FBI agent out of the office.

  Chapter Twelve

  I’m sorry—I’ve been listening to the tape over and over, but I just don’t recognize the voice,” Walters said. “What does Lily say?”

  McBride glanced at Brody. The agent’s eyebrows twitched upward as McBride struggled for an answer that wouldn’t sound crazy. “She thinks the caller was on the up and up.”

  “Did she recognize the voice?” Walters pressed.

  McBride sighed, out of wiggle room. “Yeah, the voice on the phone. Not the one at the school, though.”

  Walters looked from McBride to Brody and back. “At the school? Someone contacted her at the school?”

  Ignoring Brody’s frown, McBride told Andrew Walters about the intruder at the school. “She’s fine, just a little shaken.”

  “Thank God.” Walters looked shaken himself. “I don’t think I could live with myself if something happened to her because of what I’ve asked her to do.”

  R
eassuring Walters that Lily was fine, McBride steered the interview back to the tape. “Maybe the kidnapper’s connected to you somehow. Maybe a supporter you met at a rally.”

  “More likely a supporter of my opponent,” Walters said blackly. “I knew he liked to play dirty, but—”

  “Are you suggesting Senator Blackledge is connected to your daughter’s kidnapping?” Brody’s voice was quiet and grim.

  Walters sighed. “I didn’t say that.”

  Some of the task force had been dogging Gerald Blackledge for days as the savvy old senator beat the bushes in search of more votes. But given the way Walters was surging in the polls thanks to the sympathy vote, McBride couldn’t see how kidnapping Abby would serve Blackledge’s purposes. If he’d hoped that Walters would quit the race, he’d miscalculated badly.

  Walters’s cell phone rang. He glanced at the display panel. “I’ve got to get that.”

  “We’ll see ourselves out,” McBride said.

  In the elevator down to the lobby, Brody gave McBride a measuring look. “I get Walters buying into the psychic business—but you don’t, do you?”

  “Of course not,” McBride answered. But guilt nagged at him, giving his gut a nasty little tweak, as if he was being disloyal to Lily for scoffing at her visions.

  He and Brody were back at the station by eleven-thirty. On his way to his office, he checked in with Alex Vann to tell him about the interview with Walters regarding the tape from Lily’s answering machine. “Walters says he doesn’t recognize the voice and he has no idea what the man means about finding a way to contact him.”

  As McBride headed out the door, Vann pushed up out of his chair. “McBride, wait, there’s something you need to know—”

  McBride stopped short at the open door, his eyes widening when he saw the woman standing in the doorway across the hall. Her shiny blond hair glistened like silver in the glow of the overhead fluorescent lights.

  His gut twisted. “Delaine.”

  THE FBI AGENT Lily convinced to drive her to the rental car place was happy for the change of scenery; surveillance was a pain in the ass, he’d confessed on the drive to the rental place. And he took a great deal of pleasure shaking the handful of reporters who’d mobbed them as they made their escape.