by Kay Hooper
With a shrug, she said, “He was the sort who struck out at anything he feared, and when he drank he got paranoid as well as mean. Like I said, I did my best to stay out of his way. As I got older, it was a bit easier to find somewhere else to be, even if it was only the library or a museum. But, eventually, I’d have to go home, and I’d find him waiting for me.”
Lucas didn’t ask why none of her teachers or neighbors had noticed the abuse and reported it to the authorities. He knew too well that what bruises and cuts weren’t hidden beneath long sleeves and pants would likely go unnoticed. And that most people were hesitant to get involved.
“After that first time when he put me in the hospital, he was more careful, or at least I suppose he was. He seemed to know just how far he could go without inflicting enough damage to send me to a doctor. Usually it was bruises and minor cuts, nothing that wouldn’t heal or couldn’t be hidden.
“It might have gone on years longer, I guess, since I was stubbornly determined to finish school despite him. I even had dreams of winning a scholarship and going on to college. But then, not long before my fifteenth birthday, he went too far and broke a couple of ribs.”
Lucas swore under his breath. It hurt him to hear this; he couldn’t even imagine how much the reality of it had hurt her.
“I didn’t realize at the time; I just knew it wasn’t easy to breathe. But the next day at school, a teacher noticed the careful way I was moving and sent me to the school nurse. I tried to tell her I’d just fallen—not to protect him but because I’d seen kids going from bad homes to worse ones in the foster system, and I preferred the devil I knew. But she didn’t believe me, not once she had my shirt off and saw all the half-healed cuts and old bruises.
“So after she bound up my ribs, she called my mother and him to come to school. She talked to them in the other room, so I don’t know what was said. But when he came back into the room to get me, I could tell by his face that he was angrier than he’d ever been. One of those simmering furies of his that could last for days before he exploded.”
When she fell silent, Lucas had to ask. “What happened?”
Samantha replied, “He grabbed my wrist to pull me up from the cot I was sitting on, and even though it had never happened before, his touch triggered a vision.”
“What did you see?”
“I saw him kill me,” she answered simply.
“Jesus Christ.”
For the first time, Samantha seemed to be looking beyond Lucas, her eyes distant, almost unfocused. “I knew he’d do it. I knew he’d beat me to death. Unless I ran away. So I did, that night. I packed everything I could carry in one bag, stole about fifty bucks from my mother’s purse, and I left.”
She blinked and was suddenly there again, her gaze fixed on his face. “That’s when I got my first lesson in changing the future. Because he didn’t kill me. What I saw never happened.”
Lucas hesitated, then said, “You know it’s not that simple. The vision was a warning of what would happen if you didn’t leave, didn’t remove yourself from that situation. It was a possible future.”
“I know. And I learned, over the next years, that some things I saw couldn’t be changed. I even learned that sometimes my own intervention seemed to bring about the very thing I was trying to avoid, what a vision had shown me.” Her smile was twisted. “The future doesn’t like to be seen too clearly. That would make things too easy for us.”
“Yeah, the universe doesn’t like us to get too complacent.”
Samantha sighed. “It was like walking a high wire sometimes, especially in those early years. The only talent I had was . . . telling fortunes. Sometimes I’d try to change what I saw, and sometimes I felt almost paralyzed, unable to act at all.”
“You were very young,” Lucas said.
“Like I said, I wasn’t young even when I was.” She shook her head, adding more briskly, “I headed south, knowing that the weather would be milder if I had to sleep outside. And I usually did. Told fortunes on street corners for a few bucks. Got busted a couple of times. And finally hooked up with Leo and the Carnival After Dark.”
“How long were you on the streets?”
“Six, seven months. Long enough to know I wouldn’t be able to have any kind of a life that way. As you said, the carnival was a much better option.” She looked at him steadily. “And if you’re wondering, I don’t want your pity. Lots of people have sad stories; at least mine had a relatively happy outcome.”
“Sam—”
“I just wanted to remind you that you aren’t the only one who knows something about pain and fear. You aren’t, Luke. It was a long, long time before I could sleep through the night. A long time before I stopped expecting him to suddenly show up in my life and hurt me again. And a long time before I learned to trust anyone.”
“You trusted me,” he said.
“I still do.” Without waiting for a response, she got up from the bed and began turning the covers back. “The shower’s yours. I’m going to bed. Can’t seem to get warm.”
Lucas wanted to say something, but he didn’t know what. He didn’t know how to bridge the distance between them, far too aware that he was responsible for it. He knew what Sam wanted from him, or at least he thought he did—her needling had made that plain.
She wanted him to tell her about Bryan.
But that was a wound that was still raw and untouchable, and Lucas shied away even from thinking about it.
Instead, he gathered what he needed from the bag he had brought from his own motel room and headed for the shower, hoping the hot water would help him to think.
He had no doubt that without her needling and pushing, he would not have found Wyatt in time. She had found a way—however painful—to force him to reach beyond his walls, to lash out in anger, and in so doing to open himself to the fear and pain he’d been designed by nature to intercept.
It disturbed Lucas deeply that his own anger seemed a better key to unlocking his abilities than anything else he had discovered in years of concentrated effort. He had to believe, just from what he knew of psychics and psychic ability, that his was not supposed to work that way.
He should have been able to consciously, calmly, tap his abilities, focus them—and to do so long before he was so drained and exhausted the effort very nearly incapacitated him.
He knew that.
He had known that for a long time.
He even knew why he had been unable to do so, though it was not something he allowed himself to consider very often.
As badly as he wanted to find the victims of the crimes he investigated, as badly as he wanted to find those who were lost and in pain and terror, there was a part of him that dreaded and even feared what it cost him.
He felt what they felt.
And their terror, their doomed agony, pulled him into a hell of torment that was a memory he couldn’t bear.
The bedroom was very quiet and semidark when Lucas came out of the bathroom. He checked the door again, just to be sure, then slid his weapon under the pillow beside Samantha’s and got in that side of the bed. The lamp on his side was on low, and he left it that way.
He lay beside her for a long time, staring at the ceiling. Then he felt her shiver and, without hesitating, turned toward her and pulled her into his arms.
“Still cold,” she murmured, unresisting.
He pulled her a bit closer, frowning, because her skin wasn’t cold, it was just this side of feverish. And he had the sudden, unsettling realization that the cold place Samantha tapped into to use her abilities, the place a brutal animal had awakened with violence, was as hauntingly dark and tormenting as anything he had ever experienced.
And, for her, inescapable.
16
Wednesday, October 3
Caitlin Graham honestly didn’t know why she was still involved in the investigation of kidnappings and murders. Why she wanted to be here, and why they allowed it. She thought of herself as the only civilian in the
bunch, despite Samantha’s lack of law-enforcement credentials; the other woman clearly understood the procedures involved, as well as possessing an obvious investigative knack.
“The only thing we have that even remotely resembles a lead,” she was saying now, “are those ATV tracks the CSU found up at the mine this morning.”
Looking over a printout he’d just received, Lucas said, “Preliminary report is that the vehicle is likely to be a Hummer, just like we’ve been driving up there.”
Wyatt grunted. “We have four in the motor pool. Other than those of us who have to patrol in the mountains around here, they aren’t all that common—though more so than they used to be.”
“Impressive TV ads,” Caitlin said. “And they’re on some high-profile TV shows. So now they’re sexy.”
The sheriff agreed with a rueful nod.
“Still out of reach of most car owners, though,” Lucas noted. “And still pretty rare. I’m getting a list covering owners in every state in which there’s been a kidnapping, including this one.”
“And then?” Wyatt inquired.
“Hoping a name will jump out at one of us,” Lucas replied with a sigh.
“Would he be driving with an out-of-state tag?” Jaylene wondered aloud. “Wouldn’t it make him look even more conspicuous?”
“At this time of year?” Wyatt shook his head. “Place is full of tourists, especially in October. They come to hike, look at the leaves, camp. Even with all the publicity lately—or maybe because of it—the numbers I’m seeing are up over last year.”
“Lost in a crowd of strangers,” Samantha murmured.
“My bet,” Lucas said, “is that he only drives the Hummer when he has to. When he’s moving around here in town, he’ll have something a lot more ordinary and inconspicuous.”
“Bound to,” Wyatt agreed.
“Look,” Jaylene said, “he can’t be staying at any of the motels in town, right?”
“Unlikely,” Lucas said. “He’s a loner; he won’t be around other people any more than he has to.”
“Okay. And so far, he’s been leaving his victims in remote areas, mostly up in the mountains. But he knows we’ve been searching those places, at least the ones on our list of possibles, which is probably why he hid Wyatt away in a mine that wasn’t on any of our maps and that no one remembered.”
“Big assumption,” Wyatt said. “The mine must have been on his list, otherwise he wouldn’t have had time to get his guillotine up there.”
She nodded, a bit impatiently. “Yeah, but that’s not what I’m thinking. He has to be staying somewhere during all this. We’ve had rangers and cops checking campers and hikers since we got here, obviously with no luck, but he has to know what we’re doing.”
“He’s watching,” Samantha said.
Jaylene nodded again. “He’s watching. So he won’t put himself in a position to be noticed or questioned. And he won’t be too far away, not any more often than he has to be. Which means he can’t be sitting in a cozy tent off the marked campsites and trails way up in the mountains. He has to be close. Most of the time, he has to be close.”
“Pretending to be a member of the media?” Caitlin guessed. “Lost in that crowd of faces?”
Lucas considered, then shook his head. “He’s too focused on his game to be able to act a part, and he’d know that. But I wouldn’t be surprised if he hadn’t tried to talk to a journalist at least once in order to get information. Probably after those periods when he’d been occupied by a kidnapping.”
Wyatt lifted his brows. “I can put a few people to questioning the media—if you don’t think it might tip our hand in some way.”
Lucas didn’t have to consider that. “I think we need to get as much information as fast as we can.”
Samantha was looking steadily at him. “You feel it too. Time’s running out.”
He returned her stare, nodding slowly. “You were right—we beat him yesterday. And he is not going to want that hanging over his head for long.”
“Another kidnapping so soon?” Wyatt said. “Christ.”
“If we’re lucky,” Lucas said, “he’ll act out of haste, or at least out of anger, make a move before he takes the time to work out all the details. Because that’s the only way we’re going to catch this bastard—if he slips up.”
He had no idea how much those words would come to haunt him.
“What’re you, made of iron?” Quentin inquired somewhat irritably as Galen continued to pace from window to window in the living room of the small house rented for the duration. “Get some rest, for Christ’s sake. They’re all together and watching each other’s backs; we need to sleep while we can.” He had been trying to follow his own advice, stretched out on a rather lumpy couch.
“Something’s wrong,” Galen said.
“Yeah, there’s a kidnapping murderer on the loose. Got the memo.”
Ignoring the characteristic sarcastic humor, Galen merely said, “I thought you were supposed to be precognitive.”
“I am.”
“And you can’t feel that something is about to happen?”
Quentin sat up and eyed the other man. “None of my senses are telling me anything except that I’m tired as hell. Comes of tramping over half a mountain and then spending the night on guard.”
“You didn’t need to watch Sam; Luke was with her.”
“Habit. Besides, I couldn’t sleep. Then. I’d like to now, if you don’t mind.”
Galen moved from a side window to the front one and stood to one side of it as he peered out.
Still watching him, Quentin said, “If we’re seen during the day, it could blow our cover. Well, mine, at least. You blended nicely into the carnival these last weeks.”
A flicker of amusement showing briefly on his harsh face, Galen said, “Jealous?”
“Didn’t you want to run away and join the circus when you were a boy?”
“No. Wanted to run away and join the army. Which I did.” He paused, eyes narrowing as he gazed out the window. “As with most fantasies, it turned out that reality wasn’t nearly as much fun as what I’d imagined.”
Quentin was about to take the opportunity to further explore his taciturn companion’s rather mysterious past when fate intervened, in the form of one of the flashes of knowledge with which his ability often gifted him. He went perfectly still, concentrating.
Galen turned his head, eyes still narrowed. “Something?”
“Oh,” Quentin said. “Shit.”
“What?”
“We need to get to the carnival.”
“Why?”
“Games,” Quentin said. “He likes games.”
“I need to touch it,” Samantha said.
“No.” Lucas’s voice was flat.
They happened to be alone together in the conference room, at least for the moment, but Samantha kept her own voice low and steady. “So far, I haven’t touched any of his murder machines. But he built them, Luke. With his own hands and all the hate inside him.”
“Which is why you aren’t going to touch either the tank or the guillotine,” he said.
“They’re all we’ve got. And just because science couldn’t find any evidence on them doesn’t mean I can’t.”
“Jaylene tried. Nothing.”
“I’m stronger than she is, you know that. And I’ve already touched this maniac’s mind, with the pendant. I can connect with him by touching his machines. I have to try to do that.”
“No.”
“We have no leads worth pursuing. We’re questioning journalists and waiting for a list of Hummer owners on the East Coast you know as well as I do will be hundreds of names long. We’re waiting, Luke. Waiting for him to make his next move. We’re playing his game, just like he wants. And we can’ t afford that luxury anymore. You know that.”
He was silent.
“One of us has to connect with him.” She allowed that statement to hang in the air between them, never taking her eyes off his fa
ce.
Lucas almost flinched, but his gaze remained steady. “Then I will.”
“Your ability doesn’t work the same way. Touching doesn’t help you connect. So how’re you going to connect, Luke? How are you going to open yourself up enough to feel your way into this monster’s mind?”
“I don’t know, dammit.”
Caitlin came into the room just then, holding the cup of coffee she had gone to get and saying, “One of the journalists is saying he remembers somebody asking a lot of questions. Luke, Wyatt thinks you should hear what he has to say.” She stopped suddenly, looking from one to the other of them, and added uncertainly, “Should I leave?”
“No,” Lucas said. Then, to Samantha, he repeated flatly, “No.” He left the room.
“A man of few words,” Caitlin noted, still uncertain.
“And all of them autocratic.”
“You don’t really mean that. Do you?”
Samantha got to her feet. “Let’s just say that this is one time I can’t let Luke tell me what to do for my own good.”
“Have you ever?” Caitlin set her cup on the table and followed Samantha from the room. “Hey, don’t get mad at me. I just—”
“I’m not mad. At least, not at you. Or at Luke, really. He can’t help being the way he is; if he could, there wouldn’t be a problem.”
Caitlin wasn’t sure where Samantha was going, or why she was following her, but didn’t allow either question to stop her. “I gather this has something to do with you making him so angry yesterday so he was able to find Wyatt?”
“Something,” Samantha agreed, turning into a stairwell that took them down to the garage basement of the building. “I don’t seem to have the energy to do that again today. So I’m going to try something different.”
“Like what?” Caitlin followed her across the currently deserted garage to a room off to one side. When she saw what it contained, she felt a chill. “Sam—”
Samantha looked at her with a small smile, then moved to stand between the glass tank and the guillotine that were placed about four feet apart. “I’m sorry, Caitlin. I shouldn’t have let you come down here.”