Chill of Fear

by Kay Hooper

  And on the other side . . .

  Diana’s finger lightly touched the image of the little girl on the other side of the dog. She too was dressed for summer, but her fairer hair was shorter and less restrained, her grin not so shy as Missy’s.

  “She looks familiar,” Quentin said. Then he swore under his breath as he looked at Diana.

  “My father carries this picture in his wallet,” she said slowly. “But only half of it.” She touched the image of the fair little girl again. “This half. The part with me in it.”

  “You might as well use this lounge,” Stephanie told Quentin, adding, “It isn’t used much even when the hotel is full, and with the early check-outs we’ve had since yesterday . . .” She looked across the beautifully furnished third-floor room at Diana, who was standing by one of the windows gazing out over the gardens, and added in a lower voice, “Is she all right?” All Stephanie knew about the photograph they had found was that it might indicate a familial relationship between Diana and one of the children killed here at The Lodge; she hadn’t asked for details.

  “I don’t know,” he replied honestly. “The last twenty-four hours have been . . . Christ, ‘rough’ isn’t the word for it. Her entire life has changed.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what happens now.”

  Stephanie eyed him uncertainly. “Aren’t you supposed to? I mean, isn’t that your psychic thing, seeing the future?”

  Quentin didn’t bother to once again explain that he never saw anything. Instead, he merely said, “The irony hasn’t gone unnoticed, believe me. With a couple of minor exceptions, my abilities have pretty much been absent since I got here. Maybe the explanation is that I’ve been so focused on the past, the future’s been out of my reach. At least that’s what my boss says, and he’s usually right.”

  “I don’t pretend to understand any of it,” Stephanie said frankly. “Look, do you want me to have some coffee sent up? It looks like you guys are going to be here for a while.”

  “That’d be great, thanks.”

  “Okay. Good luck finding something helpful in that lot.” She nodded toward the two boxes filled with stuff Quentin had transferred, with her permission, from the trunks in the attic.

  The lounge could be closed off from the hallway outside by pocket doors, but Quentin didn’t bother to draw those closed after Stephanie left. The Lodge really did feel practically deserted, and he doubted they’d be interrupted or disturbed by a guest wandering casually into the room.

  He approached Diana warily, more than a little worried because she’d said next to nothing since they had found the photograph in the attic. The photograph she still held in one hand, though she had stopped staring at it to gaze out the window.

  Before Quentin could speak, she said in a perfectly composed voice, “You were right, you know, about any magnetized cards I carry not working for long.”

  He knew she was going somewhere with this, so he followed without question. “Yeah, something about our electromagnetic field affects them.”

  “The keycards die faster than credit cards.”

  “Probably because they’re rekeyed or remagnetized more than once in a process meant to be fairly temporary.”

  She nodded slowly. “So the magnetic information on credit cards is intended to be more permanent, and so is more resistant to interference.”

  “That’s our theory.”

  “And cell phones? They only work for me a week or two and then just die. The cell phone companies can’t explain it. I finally stopped trying to carry one.”

  “Same thing. Our electromagnetic field interferes with anything magnetic or electronic, especially those things that we tend to carry with us or on us most often.”

  “You carry a cell phone.” It was clearly visible, worn on a belt clip.

  “We’ve found a rubberized casing that seems to protect them, at least for a while. The batteries still tend to lose their charge faster than what’s considered normal, but at least we have the use of the phones for a reasonable amount of time.”

  “Ah. I wondered.” She paused. “May I borrow your cell phone, please?”

  “Of course.” He released the phone from its belt clip and handed it over, beginning to have an inkling what she meant to do. He didn’t know if it was a good idea, but he also couldn’t think of an argument she was likely to listen to right now.

  Diana examined the casing protecting his phone for a moment with what seemed idle curiosity, then opened it and tapped in a number, murmuring, “Long distance, sorry. Really long distance, since I think he’s at his London office. My taxpayer dollars at work.”

  Ignoring that, he said, “I can leave, if you’d rather be alone.”

  She looked at him for the first time. “No. I’d rather you stayed.”

  Quentin nodded, but he wasn’t much reassured. The odd, flat shine that had been visible in her eyes when they were in the caves was back, and the very stillness of her face hinted at something frozen. Something that might shatter at the first wrong touch.

  Diana returned her gaze to the window as she waited for the call to go through, then said into the phone, “Hi, Sherry, it’s Diana. Is he busy? I need to talk to him. Thanks.”

  “He works this late?” Quentin asked, having rapidly calculated the time difference.

  “He works all hours, seven days a week,” Diana replied. “And pays his assistants double overtime to work six.”

  Quentin wondered if that had always been the case, or if Diana’s father had taken refuge in his work when first his wife and then his daughter had tried and seemingly failed to cope with apparent mental problems. But before he could frame the question, Diana’s father took her call.

  Elliot Brisco, as it turned out, had one of those distinct, powerful voices that was clearly audible on cell phones, so much so that Quentin was easily able to hear both sides of the conversation.

  Then again, maybe he was automatically calling on the spider sense to listen with unusual intentness.

  “Diana? Where the hell are you?”

  “Hi, Dad. How’ve you been?”

  “I’ve been worried to death about you, Diana, and you damned well know it. That doctor of yours has refused to answer any of my questions, and—”

  “I asked him not to tell you where I was, and I asked you to respect that. Besides which, the law agrees my medical information should be confidential. I’m thirty-three, Dad, not a child. And the judge decided I was capable of making my own decisions.”

  The one statement about a court decision told Quentin a lot. Clearly, Diana had fought for her independence, probably as soon as the medications were out of her system. And just as obviously, her father had not relinquished control over her life willingly.

  “You’ve been ill most of your life,” he said now, his voice taking on a hard edge. “Am I not supposed to worry when you suddenly go off all your medications and then disappear God only knows where?”

  “I didn’t disappear. I told you I was going to try another form of therapy.”

  “And I wasn’t supposed to ask questions about that? Jesus, Diana, with all the crackpots and New Age nonsense out there, you could have been doing any kind of half-assed thing masquerading as therapy. They used to believe LSD was therapeutic, remember?”

  “No drugs this time,” she said. “I’m not smoking anything. I’m not drinking anything. It’s an artistic workshop, Dad, that’s all. I’ve been . . . painting my demons.”

  Elliot Brisco made a sound that, to Quentin, indicated either disbelief or withering impatience. “Painting? What the hell is that supposed to accomplish?”

  “It accomplished quite a lot, actually. Certainly much more than I expected it to.” Diana drew a breath and then let it out slowly, as if for control. “I’m at The Lodge, Dad. In Tennessee. Does that ring a bell?”

  “The Lodge. You’re at The Lodge.” Abruptly, her father’s voice was flat, and in that flatness Quentin heard or sensed something a lot like fear.

 
“Yeah.” Diana tilted her head slightly to one side, as if she heard it too, then lifted the hand holding the old photograph so that she could see it. “And I found something here I wasn’t looking for. An old picture of two little girls. They don’t really favor . . . and yet they do. When you really look at them, you realize they could be . . . sisters.”

  “Diana—”

  “It’s the photo you carry in your wallet, Dad. Part of it, anyway. Tell me, is the other half torn away, or just folded back out of sight? Did you rip her out of your life, or just tuck her away where you didn’t have to look at her?”

  Silence.

  Diana’s voice was quiet but relentless. “Don’t you think it’s time you told me about Missy?”

  Beau Rafferty dismissed his students for the day, and when they’d gone began to gather up charcoal pencils and colored chalks they had used and put them neatly away in boxes and cans. Then he moved from easel to easel, carefully closing the big sketchbooks to allow his students’ work some privacy.

  He glanced up with a brief frown as a low rumble of thunder sounded, then returned to his worktable to clean a few brushes and put away a much-used set of watercolors. He was still silently debating when he finished, but another distant rumble of thunder made up his mind for him. He searched briefly among the organized clutter on the worktable and found his phone.

  The number was programmed into his speed-dial, so he only had to hit one button. And the call was answered before the second ring.

  “Yeah.”

  “There’s a storm coming,” Beau said.

  “Spring in the mountains. Typical weather.”

  “Uh-huh. I was just wondering if you knew. Ahead of time.”

  “I’ve spent time in Tennessee,” Bishop said.

  “That wasn’t really an answer,” Beau said judiciously.

  “Wasn’t it?”

  Sighing, Beau said, “Well, I can’t say I haven’t been warned.”

  “About what?”

  “About you, Yoda.”

  “According to Maggie, you’re the Zen-like master, not me.”

  “Maybe, but there’s something just a little bit spooky about how you do it, pal.”

  Instead of responding to that, Bishop merely said, “I’ve been meaning to ask if you’re enjoying your first official SCU assignment.”

  “It has had its moments,” Beau said, ruefully accepting the change of subject. “I think I’ve helped a few of the students, anyway. Do you consider that a plus?”

  “It’s what I expected.” Amusement crept into Bishop’s voice. “The whole point of someone like you joining the unit, Beau, is so that you can do what you’re best at—painting, and helping others. Whatever you do for me on the side is just a bonus.”

  “Umm. So you weren’t really counting on any of my psychic skills this trip, huh?”

  Immediately, Bishop’s voice changed. “Why? What have you seen?”

  Beau walked around the worktable and headed for the back corner and the secluded spot where Diana’s easel had always been. With her otherwise occupied today, he had set up his own “doodling” oil painting there, and had worked on it earlier before his students had arrived.

  “Beau?”

  “I thought it was me, at first,” he said conversationally. “Because I was working on a painting here on Diana’s easel. But then I remembered that her big sketchpad was still here, behind my canvas. And since that’s where it’s coming from, I don’t think it’s me.”

  “Beau, what are you talking about?”

  The artist lifted his half-finished oil of The Lodge off the easel and set it aside, then opened the big sketchpad and began turning the pages. “The thing is, she tore that page off the sketchpad. I noticed later that it was missing. So it shouldn’t be here at all.”

  “Her sketch of Missy?”

  “Yeah. It’s here again, Bishop. Or something that looks a lot like the original.” Beau stood back, studying the open sketchpad and the drawing it revealed, all in charcoal—except for the vivid slash of scarlet marring the figure of the little girl and still dripping very slowly off the page and onto some rags Beau had earlier placed beneath the easel.

  “And it’s bleeding.”

  “Tell me about my sister, Dad,” Diana said.

  There was a long silence while she waited patiently, and then Elliot Brisco finally replied.

  “I am not having this discussion with you over the phone. I’ll be finished up here and head back to the States by Monday. Then we can talk. Go home, Diana.”

  Quentin felt as well as saw her slump a little, not in a release of tension but rather as though a new weight had settled onto her shoulders.

  “Home to more lies? I don’t think so. I’m staying here, Dad. I’ll find the answers myself.”

  “You don’t know what you’re saying. What you’re doing. Go home. Go home, and I promise we’ll talk.”

  Diana drew another breath, and this one sounded ragged as the frozen stillness of her face began to shatter. “More than thirty years. You’ve had plenty of time to tell me the truth about Missy, about who she was. Makes me wonder what else you’ve been lying about, Dad.”

  “Diana—”

  She snapped the phone closed, hanging up on her father, and handed it back to Quentin without looking at him. But her words were directed to him when she murmured, “Somehow, I don’t see this story having a happy ending, do you?”

  He automatically returned the phone to its belt clip, and with his free hand grasped her arm, because he once again had that unsettling feeling that she could somehow drift away from him. “Diana, you don’t know the story—neither of us does.”

  “He didn’t deny Missy was my sister. If it wasn’t true, he would have denied it.”

  “Maybe. But there could still be a reasonable explanation for all this.”

  She turned her head and met his intent gaze, her own not quite pleading. “Could there? What could that be, Quentin? Why would a father never mention the existence of another daughter? Why, in all these years, have I never found any pictures of her except for this?” She lifted the photo again. “Why don’t I remember her?”

  Quentin answered the last question, because it was the only one he could think of an answer for. “You don’t remember a lot of things from your life, you told me that yourself. The drugs, Diana, the medications.”

  A frown flitted across her face as they both heard a distant growl of thunder, and he felt her tense, but her gaze remained locked with his. “Yes, the drugs. Maybe that’s something else my father has to answer for. Because if he could lie to me about Missy . . . then maybe he lied about other things. Maybe he lied about me being sick.”

  “It doesn’t have to have been a deliberate lie.” Quentin played devil’s advocate because he had to, because he knew how dangerous it was for Diana to so suddenly lose all trust in her father. “With everything you’ve described about your childhood, he had every reason to believe you were going through something out of the ordinary. He just looked in the wrong place for answers, for treatments.”

  “Or he knew. He knew and did his best to keep me doped up and unaware.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “So I wouldn’t remember Missy.”

  Another rumble of thunder, this one louder, made Quentin pull her away from the window and guide her to sit on one of the sofas near the boxes he had brought down from the attic. He sat down beside her, silently cursing the approaching storm because already he felt edgy and uneasy, and was all too aware that his senses were becoming untrustworthy. It was like someone turning the volume up and down on a stereo system randomly, so that one moment his senses were muffled and the next they were blasting “loudly” in his consciousness.

  It was, to say the least, distracting, and he called on all the discipline he had learned and earned over the years to concentrate on her and what they were talking about.

  “Diana, listen to me. As far as I’ve been able to determine, Missy and h
er mother came to live here at The Lodge when Missy was about three. You can’t have been much older than that. When did you turn thirty-three?”

  “Last September.”

  He nodded. “If Missy had lived, she’d be thirty-three this July. So, assuming you two were sisters, you were older by less than a year, and no more than four when—when she came to live here. How many of us remember much at all of our lives from those early years?”

  “I should remember a sister.” She stared down at the photo she held, frowning.

  “It’s not something we can be sure about, Diana. Not without more information.”

  Her gaze shifted to the nearby boxes. “Maybe we’ll find something in there.”

  “Maybe. But don’t get your hopes up. Most of Missy and her mother’s belongings were destroyed in the North Wing fire years ago. It’s sheer chance that this photo survived.” Except that he didn’t believe in anything as random as chance, didn’t believe in coincidence. There was always a reason. Always.

  Even as the scattered thoughts raced through his mind, Diana looked at Quentin, a sudden hope in her eyes. “Her mother. Quentin, what happened to her mother?”

  He didn’t want to deliver more disturbing news, but had no choice. “She left not long after the fire. I’ve never been able to trace her.”

  “And that was when? How many years ago?”

  “The fire was less than a year after Missy was murdered. So, twenty-four years ago, give or take a few weeks.”

  “What did she look like?”

  Quentin had to pause for only an instant. “A lot like Missy. Dark hair, big dark eyes, oval face. Average height. On the thin side, as I recall. Maybe even fragile.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I remember her, Diana, vividly.” He watched the hope in her eyes turn to confusion, and added, “What is it?”

  “That isn’t my mother.”

  My mother was a redhead, like me,” Diana said. “Tall, athletic. There was nothing fragile looking about her; that’s one of the reasons I always wondered about her illness, because in all the pictures, she looked so healthy. So strong.”