by Kay Hooper
“We’re always working against the clock.”
“Stop backing me into logical corners,” she said with sudden irritation.
“I usually don’t have to,” he responded mildly. “You’re the most ruthlessly logical woman I know.”
“I’m not sure that’s a compliment.”
“Fishing?”
“Well, of course I’m fishing.”
He smiled slightly, but his gaze was a bit more watchful than usual. For Hollis to become irritated, at least momentarily, wasn’t at all unusual, but he was all too aware that this particular evil seemed bent on invading human minds and influencing both thought and behavior. Like Bishop, DeMarco did not believe his partner could be deceived by evil, far less taken over by it, but that wasn’t to say it might not have a destructive effect on her.
Especially when she was standing in the middle of it, and was distracted by unspoken worries about what horrible thing might be happening in town. Or out here, behind closed doors.
Worried that there could be a bloodbath today. Or tomorrow.
Worried about her newly fledged team.
“It’s a compliment,” he assured her. “One of your strengths. You always find the logic in madness. Which is what we’re dealing with here.”
“Madness. That’s true enough.”
He turned more to face her without releasing her hand, studying her slightly abstracted expression, the way her gaze roved restlessly around the valley. “So, find the logic.”
“Maybe I can’t this time.”
“You already have. You were very clear with Bishop, the others. We have to find the source of this energy. Before we can do anything to stop it, we have to cut it off from its source. Preventing it from intensifying, building. That’s logical, isn’t it? When you don’t know the reach of your enemy but do have some warning of increasing power, you have to define that reach yourself. Impose limits, and as quickly as possible.”
“That sounds military.”
“I’m not surprised.” He was former military. “Hollis?”
“Yeah?”
“Look at me.”
She did, her abstracted expression slowly fading, her normal sharp awareness returning. She blinked. “What just happened?”
“You tell me.”
After a moment, she said slowly, “Damn. That was . . . stealthy.”
“The energy?”
“Yeah. I didn’t even realize it had got in. Why didn’t I know it had got in?”
“Had it? Or was it just . . . trying to get in?”
Hollis nodded, realizing. “Yeah, that’s what it was doing. If you hadn’t made me focus—”
“You would have done it yourself. You were just distracted for a moment.”
“And a moment is all it took. Jesus. I know I don’t have much of a shield yet, consistently anyway, but I’m supposed to be sensitive to energy. Especially negative energy. I really should have felt what was happening.”
“You will next time,” he said.
Rather grimly, she said, “Thanks to you, I had a warning. This time. I have a feeling not many people here will get that. We have to warn the others, Reese. And we have to find the source.”
“We will,” DeMarco said.
* * *
• • •
“I DON’T KNOW what the fuck I’m doing here,” Dalton said.
“Yes, you do.” Reno kept her attention focused on the road that wound down from the mountains to Prosperity. She was driving their Jeep, in part because Dalton did not have a license.
One of his small rebellions. Or just another attempt to impose control on his surroundings. Probably both.
“I don’t—”
“Can you feel the energy?”
He was silent for a moment, then said reluctantly, “My skin’s crawling, and there’s pressure. You?”
“The same. I sort of wish I could see it the way Hollis does. On the other hand, seeing it might freak me out even more.”
“You should be freaked out. We both should be. This is not our job, Reno.”
“Maybe it should be.”
He frowned at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
She was silent for a moment, then said, “We’re here because we were summoned, like the others. Because some . . . universal consciousness, or God, or the devil decided we had the right tools to fight this—this evil.”
“Reno—”
“Do you ever think in absolutes, Dalton? I don’t believe I ever did. Right or wrong, black or white, good or evil.”
“I don’t believe there are absolutes,” he said finally. “There isn’t a clear, dividing line between good and evil, Reno. There are endless shades of gray. Just like there are between other extremes.”
She frowned. “I suppose that makes sense. But something else I’m feeling now that we’re here, now that we’re actually going to Prosperity, is darkness. Evil. I can feel that.”
“After that goddamned vision of yours I’m not surprised.”
“Maybe, but my point is that we were given these tools, tools most other people don’t have. Doesn’t that also give us the responsibility to use them? To fight the darkness?”
Suddenly dry, he said, “It’s a little late in the day to be questioning that, don’t you think?”
“I don’t just mean this time. I mean all the time. I sell real estate, Dalton. You and Logan do IT work from home. Sully’s a rancher. Olivia works at a bank. I’m not sure what Victoria is doing right now, but it’s a good guess it’s something . . . ordinary, like all her other temp jobs have been.”
“Most people do ordinary,” he said.
“We aren’t most people. That’s the point. Look, if my vision was right—and they always are—and if Hollis and Reese are right, which I hear they mostly are, then this thing we’re going to fight has been building up a long time.”
“So?”
“So Hollis and Reese have been fighting it, or pieces of it, for years. Bishop, Miranda, the SCU. They go into really dark places, and they fight monsters. Monsters most of the rest of the world doesn’t even know about.”
He waited with uncharacteristic patience.
“So maybe we could have made a difference before. If we’d been in the game, I mean. Maybe this darkness would never have been able to build up. Maybe those people yesterday wouldn’t have died.”
“Regrets are useless,” he reminded her. “We can’t fix what’s behind us, only what’s ahead of us.”
Reno sent him a faintly surprised glance. “I didn’t think you had any regrets.”
“They’re useless. You heard me say. Look, I’m not a cop. You’re not a cop. Neither one of us has any experience with law enforcement. We’ve been living our lives—”
“—hiding from the world—”
“—day to day, just like most everyone else. Nobody asked us to suit up and get into the game, and if we’re honest we’ll admit that neither of us was even paying attention. Like most people.”
“Bishop asked us.”
“Actually, he didn’t. Or, at least, I never heard him ask any of us. He found us, and he wanted to know if we were up to joining the SCU or that civilian outfit of his, Haven. Clearly, none of our little group was. But he still kept tabs, didn’t he? He put us up in that so-called group home. Where we didn’t feel quite so much like freaks. He visited when he could. Couple other SCU and Haven people visited. They offered advice, talked about their experiences. We did a few experiments of our own. But in the end we all went in different directions, and for most of us it took less than a year. Does that sound like a team to you?”
“It sounds to me like we were mostly scared,” she replied.
“I wouldn’t argue with that. Scared, anxious, wondering how on earth we could possibly fit into the world.”
Re
no decided to leave personal matters out of it for the moment. “And now?”
“Now something other than Bishop forced the issue. Maybe it took a cosmic kick in the ass to get us here, but we’re here. Maybe we’re even a team.”
Surprised, she said, “If you knew that and were willing, why the hell have you been a pain in the ass about it?”
“I didn’t say I was willing. I said I was kicked in the ass and now I’m here. In the game. I don’t know any more than you do about what happens next. Or how I’ll feel about being in the game when this is over with, assuming we survive. And neither do you.”
“Huh,” Reno said slowly.
“Turn left ahead,” Dalton told her.
THIRTEEN
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 9
Archer didn’t immediately realize that the SCU team he’d called in to help had more or less vanished. He didn’t realize for several hours, in part because he and Katie went to talk to Stacey Bowers and that took time because neither of them wanted to make the awful situation even worse for her.
Not that she was able to help them. She had not noticed any sign from her husband that suicide was in any way on his mind, or even that anything was bothering him, and she maintained with absolute assurance that Sam would never kill himself. Never.
When they returned to the station, both discouraged and both tensely anticipating bad news of some kind since the overwhelming events of the day before could not be the end of it all, Archer met briefly with the doctor and okayed moving Jim Lonnagan to the hospital, where he’d be kept sedated and under restraints, at least for the present.
A temporary measure, the doctor had noted.
Archer didn’t know what the hell a permanent measure would be, and hoped to God he wouldn’t have to make that call.
After supervising the transfer, via ambulance, of Lonnagan to the hospital, Archer went into the conference room, where Katie was sitting with postmortem reports spread out around her and her gaze fixed on the big map of the valley pinned to one of the boards.
As Archer came into the room, she said, “Jill’s working fast. She’s done the postmortems on the three Gardner kids.”
“Anything we didn’t already know?”
“Not really. Though she does agree that Luke Gardner was probably killed at least a couple hours before the other kids were killed. Says Ed Gardner was killed last; she’s working on his post now.”
“And when was the other stuff done?”
Steadily, Katie said, “All the postmortem injuries happened within a couple of hours of death.”
Archer tried not to imagine how horrifying that scene must have been. And had to imagine, of course.
“Leslie Gardner is now officially in a coma,” Katie continued. “And the docs say it’s a deep one. Beyond that, they aren’t offering anything we didn’t know before. They don’t know if or when she’ll come out of it, or what shape she’ll be in if or when she does. Though I guess we can make some educated guesses based on Elliot Weston and on Jim.”
“Yeah. I guess.” He looked around. “Where are our federal friends?”
“Looking for the bad guy,” Katie replied.
Archer lifted a brow at her. “The bad guy? You mean the bad guy who apparently used some kind of crazy energy to persuade a woman to murder and dismember her husband and kids, a real estate agent to murder two strangers, Sam Bowers to kill himself, and Jim Lonnagan to nearly kill his wife? That bad guy?”
Katie nodded, and said immediately, “I had to put two deputies and the front desk on incoming calls. A lot of calls, Jack. People are scared. They have a lot of questions and no answers. Except word seems to have gotten around that as horrible as the deaths have been, the killers weren’t in their right minds when they committed the crimes. People are asking if it’s something in the water or the food supply; I guess that’s a lot more likely than . . . energy.”
“You think?”
She cleared her throat. “We have reports of the same sort of things we already know about: tension, headaches, the feeling that their heads are stuffed full of cotton. A few have mentioned their skin crawling. Tempers seem to be unusually short, and we’ve had some calls about loud disagreements and fistfights. Other than recommending that everyone be . . . cautious and vigilant, skip the caffeine, and see a doctor if they’re worried, there isn’t a whole hell of a lot we can tell them to help them protect themselves. Even assuming the threat’s still high, so far we have no idea if there are any visible symptoms to watch out for.”
“I hate assuming,” Archer muttered.
“Yeah, me too.”
“Hollis and Reese didn’t have anything to say?”
“I told you, Jack, they’re out looking for . . . the cause. The rest of their team should be getting settled in the hotel, and then they’ll be out searching as well.”
“For this energy monster.” It was clear that, today at least, Archer had had second thoughts about what he’d been told the night before. With rest and time to think, he was far less likely today to just accept whatever he was told.
Katie sighed. “Jack, I know how hard it is to believe something like that. But we both know what happened yesterday was not in any way normal. And absent some other explanation, doesn’t it make sense to listen to people with a lot more experience than we have with—weird and crazy?”
“Nothing in this entire situation makes sense.” He sighed. “But you’re probably right. Now tell me how we’re supposed to write this up in our reports.”
That actually hadn’t occurred to Katie, but she was nothing if not quick on her feet. Even when she was sitting down.
“Let’s . . . not put speculation in our reports. Just the facts. I mean, unless and until we have more than speculation.”
“Uh-huh.” He sighed. “Every car we have out patrolling?”
“Like we decided last night, yes. Everybody is under orders to look for anything that sticks out to them as different or unusual. And the guys on the call-in lines know to take any complaint as serious. The last half-dozen deputies are still out talking to friends and family of the victims. The dead victims and the ones still alive.”
“I know Jim’s still out, and the doctor apparently means him to stay out for the time being. Weston?”
“Pretty much the same as he was this morning. Worse than yesterday, but not catatonic. Yet, anyway.”
Archer leaned on the table, staring down at the postmortem reports. “Did Hollis say anything before they went out about . . . what might happen today?”
“No. She said the whole town’s on edge, and that’s all she was feeling. Sort of a flood of emotion, I take it. She said she’d get to a landline and call in if she feels or senses anyone struggling the way Jim did. Anyone in trouble.”
“And until then, we wait.”
“I’m afraid so, Jack.”
* * *
• • •
HOLLIS HAD THOUGHT about it and talked it over with Reese, and had decided that her team needed to be as protected as possible, especially after the brief but chilling attempt to get inside her own mind. But since only three of her team possessed shields she felt would be strong enough—Reese, Victoria, and Galen—it was impossible to send everybody out in pairs.
And she wasn’t at all sure about Galen, whether he would even accept—
“I’ll go with Olivia,” he told her.
Hollis fought to keep from betraying surprise. Now, how had Bishop known? She was also aware of a surge of rather panicked uncertainty from Olivia, and smiled at the seemingly most fragile psychic on her team. “I think that’s a good idea. Reno can make up the third place. Sully, you go with Victoria and Logan. And Dalton comes with Reese and me.”
Dalton, not so angry today but very closed in on himself for someone without a shield, merely nodded without comment.
He really was
not what Hollis had expected. At all.
It was Victoria who said somewhat uneasily, “I can’t extend my shield to cover anyone else, Hollis.”
“Yeah, I know. We can’t cover everybody with a borrowed shield, which is why I want one strong shielded mind with each group. Part of your job is to keep an eye on the others in your group.”
“Looking for?”
“Anything that bugs you. Distraction. Any actions or words that seem out of character. Just . . . anything you don’t like. All of you know each other better than Galen, Reese, and I know you; you’re more likely to notice something strange.”
Victoria said, “Damn. You mean something like an attempt to control somebody.”
“Yeah. It’s possible, Victoria. So we have to be prepared for the possibility.”
“Okay, but what happens if any of us notice something weird?”
“As soon as he found out about the energy, and especially about how screwed up communications are in the valley, Bishop had the technicians at the house work on a warning and tracking system for us. They’re installed in each vehicle as part of the radios.”
“Ah,” Sully said. “That’s what was in the bag Bishop sent with me to give Galen.”
“Yeah. Galen installed the enhanced radios in the three vehicles we brought to Prosperity yesterday and last night.”
“So we’re all on the same channel, so to speak.”
“Right. You’ll see tracking dots on the screens for each vehicle; that’s one reason we’re going to spread out in a line and basically work our way across the valley like that. We’re far enough apart to cover the valley, but close enough to each other to be able to make contact as quickly as possible.
“You notice anything wrong, get back to your vehicle and hit the red button on the radio—basically a panic button. Alerts will sound in the other vehicles, which is why nobody gets more than a hundred yards away from them. And the tracking dot for the group sounding the alert begins to flash, so we all know who needs help and where they are in relation to the rest of us.”
“And then?” Dalton asked dryly. “When everybody rushes to help?”