Hunting Fear

by Kay Hooper

  “Yes, we should. Now.”

  By the time Champion gathered up the map, Jaylene had guided Lucas into the passenger seat and climbed in back. The deputy got behind the wheel as before, admitting silently that he was a little creeped out by this.

  “She doesn’t have much time,” Lucas murmured. “She’s afraid. She’s so afraid.”

  Champion glanced at the federal agent and swore under his breath, more than a little creeped out now. Lucas gazed straight ahead, his face still ghostly pale and now beaded with sweat, and his eyes were peculiarly . . . fixed. As though he were looking at something far, far away.

  Champion lost no time in heading west toward the old gold mine.

  “How does he know?” he demanded.

  Jaylene replied, “She’s afraid and he feels it. Luke? How sure are you?”

  “She’s this way. This direction. It’s cold. It’s cold and wet . . . and she’s alone.”

  “Glen, are either of the other search teams closer than we are to the mine?”

  “I don’t think so. And radio reception up here is spotty as hell. But we can try.”

  “I’ll use the radio. You drive.” She half climbed far enough forward between the front bucket seats to reach the radio and began trying to contact the other teams.

  “Hurry,” Lucas said.

  “You’re that sure? You have to be sure, Luke. If I can reach someone and pull one or both of the other teams away from their planned areas—”

  “She’s there. She’s alone. The bastard left her alone.” His voice was strange, thin. Haunted.

  Champion swallowed a sudden sour taste in his mouth, for the first time feeling real dread.

  Jaylene kept trying to raise the other teams, but by the time Champion judged them to be nearly halfway to the mine she had pretty much given up hope. No radio contact at all, and with absolutely no signal their cell phones were worse than useless. “It’s us,” she told Champion. “If Lindsay’s there, we’re the only hope she’s got.”

  “You’re sure she’s up there?”

  “Luke is sure. And when he’s like this, he’s never been wrong.”

  “Sit back and fasten your seat belt,” Champion ordered, shifting the ATV into a lower gear to climb the almost vertical slope before them.

  Jaylene half obeyed, sitting back a little and hanging on to the front seats as the vehicle bounded through ruts deep enough to engulf most other cars or trucks.

  “Hurry,” Lucas repeated. He coughed, seemed to gasp for air.

  “Goddammit,” Jaylene said grimly.

  “Jesus, is he there with Lindsay?” Champion demanded, pushing the ATV to its straining limits.

  “He feels what she feels,” Jaylene repeated. “Hurry.”

  Lucas gasped again. Breathed shallowly.

  Champion was glad the ATV was making so much noise, its engine laboring and tires clawing like a cat for traction, because what was happening in the passenger seat was literally making his skin crawl.

  It was as if Lindsay was there. Sitting there, in the leather seat. Drowning. Every faint gasp sounded like somebody drowning, and Champion knew it was Lindsay. He felt it was her, so strongly that he was afraid to turn his head and look, because he was absolutely sure she’d be there.

  Drowning.

  What he didn’t know was just how connected the federal agent was, never mind how he was doing this. The point was that he was doing it, that he was somehow tied to Lindsay, so what would happen if she did drown?

  Champion didn’t ask.

  Jaylene pulled herself forward and held on to keep herself steady in the jolting vehicle as she peered at her partner. “Luke?”

  He coughed, muttered, “Dark.”

  “Oh, shit. Glen, how far?”

  “At least fifteen minutes,” he replied, fighting the wheel and the ATV’s tendency to buck.

  “Luke—”

  “No. No, goddammit . . .”

  Champion sneaked a quick glance at Lucas and realized immediately that whatever thread had connected him to Lindsay had been snapped. He looked dazed, shaking his head as though to clear dizziness.

  “Luke?”

  Thickly, he said, “The bastard left her alone. He left her alone. All those hours.”

  Jaylene didn’t say another word. And neither did Lucas. He sat there in the bucking, straining vehicle beside Deputy Champion, his pale face and haunted eyes telling anybody who cared to look what they would find when they reached the old gold mine.

  Even so, when they broke into the cinder-block building that had once served as the storehouse for the mine, Champion wasn’t prepared for what they found.

  To his dying day, he’d never forget the sight of Lindsay Graham suspended in a water-filled tank, garishly lighted from above, her open, sightless eyes accusing them all.

  8

  Monday, October 1

  Detective Lindsay Graham was buried on a gray and misty afternoon, laid to rest in the family plot beside her parents. They, too, had died before their time, though in their case it had been the fault of a drunk driver and an icy highway. They hadn’t been carried to their graves in a flag-draped coffin by uniformed police officers, hadn’t been saluted by dozens of other cops, many of them openly weeping, while bagpipes played plaintively.

  Their deaths hadn’t been front-page news in even the Golden local, far less several regional newspapers, and no news crews had pestered what family survived them for comments.

  Lindsay died far more famous—or infamous—than she had ever been in life, a fact that undoubtedly would have roused little in her except cynical amusement. Because in the end, famous or not, Lindsay was lowered alone into the ground just as her parents had been.

  Hugging the neatly triangled flag that had been presented to her, Caitlin stood at the graveside long after most of the others had gone, thinking about that. About her sister. For whatever reason, they hadn’t been especially close, but they had liked and respected each other, Caitlin thought.

  Too late now to wish there had been more.

  Wyatt Metcalf stepped up beside her. “I’ll drive you back to the motel,” he offered.

  There would be no traditional gathering after the funeral, not for Lindsay. She hadn’t liked the practice of covered dishes and hushed voices, of parked cars lining the long country driveways and funeral wreaths on the homes of the bereaved.

  “Bury the dead and get on with living,” she had said more than once, perhaps with a cop’s hard-won understanding. Or an orphan’s. And quite suddenly, Caitlin wished desperately that she knew what in Lindsay’s life had taught her that.

  But it was too late now to ask.

  Too late to ask what she had thought of the latest blockbuster movie, or novel, or whether popcorn was still her favorite snack. Too late to apologize for missed birthdays and unreturned phone calls, or commiserate about the often difficult life of a single career woman, or ask if Wyatt Metcalf had been the one for Lindsay.

  Just too goddamned late.

  Realizing at last that the sheriff was waiting, Caitlin said, “No, thanks. It’s close enough to walk. Everything’s close enough to walk here, really.”

  A bit awkward with her, as he had been all along, Metcalf said, “If there’s anything I can do—”

  “No. Thanks. I won’t be staying long, probably. I have to pack away her stuff, close up the apartment, deal with all the legal crap. However long that takes.”

  “We’ll get him, Caitlin. I promise you, we’ll get the bastard.”

  Caitlin knew the sheriff would be surprised if she told him the truth, that she didn’t care if they ever caught the monster who had taken her sister’s life. It wouldn’t, after all, bring Lindsay back. And, besides . . .

  He didn’t seem real, that monster. From what she’d been told, there was a curious lack of emotion there, a lack of anything human. No hate driving him, no insane voices directing him to murder.

  Just taking people for money and then killing them when he no
longer had a use for them.

  “Good,” she said, realizing the silence had lengthened yet again. “Good. I’m glad you’ll get him. You go do that now.” She didn’t realize until a tinge of color crept up into his rather haggard pallor how dismissive she sounded. She toyed briefly with the idea of explaining, but it just seemed too much trouble. And she didn’t care what he thought anyway.

  “Caitlin—”

  “I’ll be fine.” She thought the meaningless phrase should be tattooed on her forehead by now. “Thank you.”

  He hesitated, then went away.

  Caitlin didn’t turn to watch him go. She was vaguely aware of others trickling away. Aware that the solemn men from the funeral home were off to the side, patient and unmoving, along with the men ready to finish the physical task of burying her sister.

  The coffin still hung, suspended, above its vault, waiting to be lowered. The scent of the flowers was thick in the misty air, a sweet, rather sickly odor that was especially unpleasant mixed with the faint, underlying smell of freshly turned earth.

  “You have to leave her now.”

  Caitlin looked across the dully gleaming bronze-colored casket to see Samantha Burke. She was completely different from the Madam Zarina of the fortune-teller’s booth; without the turban, the colorful shawls and wraps and clinking gold jewelry, and most of all without the heavy makeup, she looked decades younger and rather ordinary.

  Or not.

  There was something in those unusually dark eyes that was far from ordinary, Caitlin thought. Something direct and honest and unnervingly discerning, as if she could truly see beyond the boundaries of what most people accepted as reality.

  Caitlin remembered how Lindsay’s ring had seemingly burned a neat circle into Samantha’s palm, and wondered what it was like to see and feel things other people couldn’t even imagine.

  “You have to leave her,” Samantha repeated. She hunched her shoulders a bit inside the oversize black jacket and thrust her hands into its pockets, as though chilled by the miserable weather. Or by something else.

  For the first time in this endless day, Caitlin didn’t respond with platitudes. Instead, she simply asked, “Why?”

  “Because it’s time to go. Time to get past this moment.” Samantha’s voice was utterly matter-of-fact.

  “Because Lindsay would want me to?” Caitlin asked dryly.

  “No. Because it’s what we do. It’s how we cope. We dress them in their Sunday best and put them inside satin-lined boxes designed to keep them dry and safe from the worms, like the concrete vaults we put the boxes in. And then we have a headstone or marker engraved, and lay turf over the spot, and at least for a while we come regularly to visit and bring flowers and talk to them as though they can hear us.”

  Caitlin was conscious of the mortuary people shifting in uneasiness or disapproval, but they naturally said nothing. For herself, Samantha’s bracing words sounded like the first real thing anyone had said to her in days.

  “I won’t even do that,” she said. “Visit, I mean. As soon as I’ve packed away her stuff, I have to go home.”

  “And get on with your life.” Samantha nodded. “The dead have their own path, and we have ours.”

  Curious, Caitlin said, “So you believe there’s something after?”

  “Of course there is.” Samantha was still matter-of-fact.

  “Do you know there is?”

  “Yes.”

  “Heaven and hell?”

  “That would be all nice and simple, wouldn’t it? Be good and go to heaven; be bad and go to hell. Black and white. Rules to live by, to keep everybody civilized. But life isn’t simple, so I don’t know why we expect death to be. What there is . . . is continued existence. Complex, multilayered, and unique to every individual. Just like life is. That much I am sure of.”

  Perhaps not surprisingly, Caitlin found that more comforting than all the sermons preached at her since childhood Sunday school.

  “It’s cold and wet out here,” Samantha said. “And those guys over there need to finish their work. I don’t think we need to be here for that. Why don’t we go get a cup of coffee or something?”

  Caitlin returned her gaze to her sister’s casket for a moment, then walked around the grave and joined Samantha. “Coffee sounds good,” she said as they headed toward the road.

  She didn’t look back.

  Leo Tedesco stood well back from the cemetery, but he had a clear view nevertheless. He watched the short graveside service, too far away to hear what was said and not particularly sorry about that; death depressed him. Violent death upset him.

  Lindsay Graham’s murder made him sick to his stomach.

  Samantha hadn’t wanted company, so he had followed at a distance without her knowledge and watched. Watched her keep herself apart from the service as she stood back among the graves yards away from where Lindsay was being laid to rest. Watched as she had deliberately kept herself out of Wyatt Metcalf’s line of sight.

  The two federal agents, Leo realized, were perfectly aware of her presence, but neither approached her either during the service or afterward, and they left without speaking to her.

  He found it hard to forgive them for that.

  He watched her talking to Lindsay’s sister and watched them leave together.

  It wasn’t like Samantha, Leo thought, to meddle. Inside her booth, Madam Zarina offered advice and answers to troubled questions, but outside it Samantha minded her own business and scrupulously avoided the business of others. It had been a hard lesson learned, but she had learned it well.

  So what was she up to now?

  The Carnival After Dark was scheduled to leave Golden in exactly one week—always assuming, of course, that Sheriff Metcalf didn’t run them out of town sooner. Their schedule was set, with stops planned for several towns in the Southeast as they worked their way back down to Florida and their winter home.

  So far, Samantha hadn’t asked Leo to alter those plans, but he was uneasily afraid she might. He didn’t have to be psychic himself to know she was bothered by this serial kidnapper, that she felt somehow compelled to involve herself in the situation. He even thought he knew why.

  Luke.

  In the fifteen years he had known her, Leo had only once seen Samantha lose her native hardheaded practicality, and the pain of that experience had changed her forever. Something in her had been destroyed, he thought. Not wantonly or even deliberately, but destroyed nevertheless.

  That saddened Leo. It also made him angry.

  “Stand out here much longer and you’re going to be real conspicuous. Not exactly the best thing to be in Golden right now.”

  Leo started and turned his head to stare at the man who had seemingly appeared out of nowhere. “How long have you been here?” he demanded.

  “Since before the service.”

  “Why?” Leo answered his own question. “You’re watching Sam, aren’t you?”

  “Don’t you think I should be?”

  Leo chewed on his bottom lip. “I don’t know. She won’t like it, I know that.”

  “I don’t give a shit what she likes.”

  “Then why aren’t you following her now?”

  “I don’t have to follow her. She’s with Caitlin Graham, having coffee at that little dive just down the road. What passes for a dive in this town, anyway. The coffee might poison her, but nothing else is going to happen in there.”

  Leo shook his head, worried. “She’s out in the open, exposed. Used to, she could go anywhere off carnival grounds and not be recognized. But the newspapers have been running pictures of her without the Zarina getup. Everybody knows what Samantha Burke looks like now. I mean, she might as well have a giant bull’s-eye painted on her back. Have you seen the newspapers? Seen what they’re reporting on TV?”

  “Yeah.”

  “The town of Golden may not have made up its collective mind about Sam, but the media sure as hell has. They just love the idea of a genuine psychic. And it’s
only a matter of time before the state and regional attention goes national. One slow news day, and I’ll be fielding calls from CNN.”

  “They have no proof she’s genuine; the sheriff’s department refused to confirm that she was ever under suspicion, much less that she predicted Detective Graham’s kidnapping—or any kidnapping—and was under voluntary observation to clear her name when it occurred.”

  “Have you been watching the same thing as I have on TV?” Leo demanded. “Reading the same newspapers? They don’t need any proof or confirmation to speculate, and they’re speculating like crazy.”

  “It’s good for the carnival.”

  “In the short run, you bet it is. Plenty of publicity, and droves of the curious buying tickets. I’m not so sure about the long run, though. Or about the effect this is going to have on Sam. She’s already working too many long hours and hardly sleeping. You know as well as I do she can’t keep that up for long, living on caffeine, her nerves, and the late show.”

  “You are from a different generation.”

  Leo frowned. “What? Oh—the late-show reference?”

  “Well, it does date you a bit. In this age of twenty-four-seven entertainment, there’s no such thing as late, let alone a late show. No national anthem and snowy TV screen to lull us to sleep in the wee small hours.”

  “You obviously remember what it was like.”

  “Hearsay. An older cousin used to tell us scary stories. He got them from something called Shock Theater—his local version of the late show, I believe. Ghosties and ghoulies and things that went bump in the night.”

  Leo was aware of a little chill he couldn’t really explain. His frown deepened. “Do we really need to discuss popular culture right now?”

  “One of us does.”

  “Would you please be serious?”

  “I,” the visitor said calmly, “am as serious as a heart attack.”

  Despite his question, Leo hadn’t needed the reminder. “Then tell me what you’re going to do about this,” he demanded.

  “I’ll do what I get paid to do.”

  “Which is?”

  “For now, wait.”

  “Wait? What the hell for?”