by Kay Hooper
A distant, rational part of her mind told her she was using up precious oxygen, that the tank’s hissing had grown quieter as it emptied its contents into her coffin, but the panic overrode everything.
Until . . .
Sam.
She went still, trying to choke back a last sob.
Sam, I’m coming.
“Where are you?” she whispered.
Near.
“There isn’t much air left,” she whispered again, realizing with another jolt of terror that it was becoming difficult to breathe.
Lie quietly, Sam. Close your eyes. I promise you . . . I’ll get there in time.
It was one of the hardest things she’d ever had to do in her life, but Samantha managed. She closed her eyes and forced her throbbing hands to lie quietly at her sides.
There was just enough trust left in her to trust that Luke would reach her in time.
Just enough.
There were a dozen willing hands and shovels following him when, after more than an hour, Lucas stopped the Jeep suddenly on the road out of Golden and raced about twenty yards off to one side of the pavement. And he didn’t have to tell them where to dig, because the freshly turned earth, in its chillingly gravelike shape, was obvious.
Immediately, the men were frantically digging, driven by their own fears and by the ashen, haunted face of the federal agent who was using his hands to scrape away the dirt filling Samantha’s grave.
Other men were ready with pry bars, and the instant wood was uncovered, they were prying up the boards. And a collective gasp sounded when the sight of Samantha’s white face and closed eyes greeted their efforts; in that instant, most of them thought she was gone.
But Lucas knew better. On his knees beside the shallow grave, he reached down and grasped her wrists, avoiding the badly bruised flesh of her hands, and pulled her up.
She opened her eyes only then, blinking in the fading light of the day. Then, as he murmured her name, she drew in a deep breath of the clean country air and threw her arms around his neck.
18
“But I don’t want to spend the night in the hospital,” Samantha said.
“Because, of course,” Lucas said, “a few broken bones in your hands are nothing, right?”
She frowned down at the heavily bandaged hands resting in her lap. “You heard the doctor. The bones in the human hand can be fragile and easily broken. But they’ll knit. And I’ll be fine. So I don’t need to spend the night here.”
Bishop said, “Feel free to arrest her, Luke.”
“She’s staying put,” Lucas said. “I’ll be here all night to make sure she does.”
Samantha sighed and abandoned protest. “Well, if I have to be here, it’s a good thing they gave me a big room. If Wyatt and Caitlin hadn’t left to take Leo back to the carnival, you wouldn’t all fit.” She eyed the crowd of people around her bed, singling out Bishop to say, “I wondered when you were going to show your face.”
“I thought it was time,” he responded calmly. “Your being snatched wasn’t exactly part of the plan.”
Standing on the other side of the bed, Galen said, “And maybe that’ll teach you not to be so damned cryptic next time. Wait for a sign. And don’t let it distract you. Jesus.”
“Actually,” Bishop said, “the carnival thing didn’t figure into it at all. The sign we told you to wait for never happened. It was supposed to be a rather impressive fireworks display: a couple of crates of ammunition burned, we assumed, to distract all of you while Gilbert got away.”
Galen blinked, and said to Quentin, “He might have told us that before now.”
“He never does,” Quentin said.
“If that’s what you and Miranda saw,” Samantha said, “why didn’t it happen?”
“We saw that back in the beginning.” He smiled, the expression softening his very handsome but rather dangerous-looking face. “Before you began changing the future you’d seen. Once that happened, anything we’d seen before then became moot.”
“Might have told us that too,” Galen grumbled.
Lucas, who had been listening silently, spoke up then to say, “Just what was the plan, if nobody minds me asking?”
“Bishop broke one of his rules,” Quentin told him. “That whole some-things-have-to-happen-just-the-way-they-happen thing. I was shocked.”
Looking at Samantha, Lucas said, “Your vision.”
She nodded and said, “Everything I told you was true, I just didn’t tell you all of it. When Leo got the bribe, we both decided to pass, to not come to Golden. We didn’t know what was going on, but whatever it was didn’t look legit. Then, that night, after we’d made the decision to continue on, I had a dream. Only it wasn’t a normal dream, it was a vision. And I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that I had seen what would happen if I didn’t go to Golden.”
“That was when she called me,” Bishop murmured.
Lucas sent him a glance, then returned his gaze to Samantha’s face. “Why? What had you seen?”
“Murders.” She didn’t quite stop herself from shivering. “Murders going on for years, getting more and more vicious. Men, women—children. All of them dying in those horrible machines he’d built, and more like them.”
“Why didn’t you—” Lucas broke off and dismissed that with a gesture, saying, “Never mind. Go on.”
“Whatever had set Gilbert on his path, the murders themselves eventually destroyed whatever humanity was left inside him. He had—or he would—begin killing for the sheer pleasure of it. That’s what the vision showed me.” She sighed. “I knew when I woke up that there was only a . . . small window of opportunity to stop him. I knew that, without question. He had to be stopped here, in Golden. If he left here free, the killing would go on for years.”
“What else?” Lucas asked steadily.
“Might as well tell him,” Bishop said when Samantha hesitated. “Not many secrets in a group of psychics.”
“Except yours,” Galen muttered, mostly under his breath.
She sighed again, and said to Lucas, “In the dream, the vision, I also saw him kill you. He won his little game. And winning didn’t stop him.”
“She wasn’t prepared to let that happen, any of it,” Bishop said. “And neither were we. So we decided to intervene, to try to change what she had seen.”
Expressionless, Lucas said, “And I was kept out of the loop in order to minimize that interference?”
“You and Jay both. We were reasonably sure that the fewer people who knew what we were trying to do, and the fewer people actively trying to change what Sam saw, the better. The more control we would have. But . . .”
“But,” Samantha continued, “with the first change—the carnival and me arriving in Golden—the future I had seen began to shift. And except for a couple of constants, like my conviction that the only way to save you was to force you to use your abilities a different way, and Gilbert’s insane gamesmanship, everything was up for grabs. All I could do was follow the plan and hope like hell we were doing the right thing and not making the situation even worse.”
“And all we could do,” Bishop added, “was keep watch over all of you as quietly as possible. It was obvious Gilbert had done his homework and knew about the SCU; the last thing we wanted him to know was that you and Jay weren’t the only team members here.”
“Except that he did know,” Jaylene said, her voice dry. She looked at Samantha. “That was what Lindsay’s warning was all about. He knows. He knew about the watchdogs. Knew he’d have to draw them away in order to get to you. And by then, he really wanted to get to you.”
“Was that why the thing with the carnival rides?” Quentin wanted to know. “To draw us away from town?”
“Well, it worked,” Jaylene reminded him. “If you two had stayed in that little house you’d rented, you would have had a clear view of the back of the sheriff’s department. Brady would have found it a lot harder to get Sam out of the building unseen.”
“And he had nothing to lose by trying the distraction,” Bishop pointed out. “With Sam apparently safe in the sheriff’s department, you two were more likely to be drawn away, if only for an hour or so. All the time he needed.”
“What I don’t get,” Samantha said, “is why Gilbert was killing time out at his little house while his son was stalking me.”
Bishop said, “My guess is that they had no idea when an opportunity to grab you would present itself. The grave was readied, and Brady Gilbert had his orders: to keep an eye on things here and take the first chance he saw.”
“He didn’t warn his father as soon as everybody headed up the mountain?” Jaylene asked.
“He probably didn’t realize what had happened,” Bishop responded. “He’d been assigned a routine funeral-escort job, and by the time he returned to the station—after a quick trip out to the fairgrounds to start up every ride and jam the controls—nearly everyone at the station was gone. The sergeant at the desk merely told him another search party was out looking for the killer. He was undoubtedly pleased that his distraction had worked and that he had a chance to grab Samantha.
“It wasn’t until he was carrying her down to his cruiser in the garage that he passed the armory and realized it was practically empty. That must have set off bells.”
“Any sign of him?” Lucas asked.
“No. The bulletins are out, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he was able to go to ground up in the mountains, at least for a while. We will get him, though. Sooner or later. For what it’s worth, I have a hunch he put the oxygen canister in with Samantha against his father’s orders.”
“Because,” Samantha said slowly, “killing me slowly wasn’t the point, not this time. Killing me—and torturing Luke—was. That’s what Gilbert would have wanted.”
Bishop nodded. “I also have a hunch that when we’ve sifted through the evidence found at Gilbert’s base and catch up with Brady, we’ll find that Brady was used by his father to gather information and to help transport the machinery, but that he had never actually killed or even helped abduct or transport any of the victims. Until Samantha.”
“Why didn’t you suspect Gilbert?” Lucas asked him. “I assume you’ve been looking into my past cases ever since Sam got in touch, so—”
“Andrew Gilbert was supposed to be dead,” Bishop answered. “He’d done a fine job of faking his own death almost four years ago. A fire at one of his warehouses, a body the right size and sex found wearing his watch and wedding ring. We’ll have to contact the authorities out there and have that body exhumed, attempt identification. There will probably be some connection to Andrew Gilbert. He needed a body and would have looked close to home. Probably his first murder.”
“Setting his plan in motion even then,” Quentin said, shaking his head. “The things people will get up to.”
“Speaking of which,” Jaylene said, “I’m ready for my supper. Now that all the shouting’s over and you guys can all be public, who wants to buy me a steak?”
It was a fairly transparent attempt to get them out of Samantha’s room, but Sam appreciated the effort and smiled at the other woman.
Jaylene linked her arms with Quentin and Galen, and said, “Boss, you coming?”
“Meet you at the elevator.”
“Good enough. See you tomorrow, Sam.”
“Good night.”
When they were gone, Bishop said to Samantha, “I meant what I told you earlier.”
“Turban and all?”
He smiled. “That turban might come in handy for undercover work someday.”
“What about the credibility issue?”
“I think the unit’s reputation is strong enough now. You’re welcome, Samantha. We could really use another seer, especially one as strong as you are. Give it some serious thought.”
“I will.”
“We also might be able to help with the headaches and nosebleeds. Meditation techniques, biofeedback. The methods help some of our psychics.”
“Something else I’ll bear in mind. Thanks, Bishop.”
“Good night, you two.” He left the room.
Lucas gazed after him for a moment, then sat on the edge of Samantha’s bed and looked down at her. “We make a good team,” he said.
“Only because I can piss you off,” she said, but smiled.
“Join the unit, Sam. I need you.”
“But do you want to need me. That’s the question.”
“I found you today because I needed you. Because I couldn’t imagine my life without you in it. And I found you because you were right about my abilities. What the SCU couldn’t uncover in five years, you touched in less than two weeks.”
“It’s only a beginning,” she said.
“I know. It’s going to take time. For me to deal with the pain I’ve been carrying around all these years, and for us. We have a lot of things to settle, I think, a lot of things to work through.”
Samantha drew a breath, and said, “I’m willing if you are.”
He took one of her bandaged hands gently in both of his and said in a very steady voice, “Then I want to tell you about my twin brother, Bryan, and about the man who abducted, tortured, and murdered him when we were twelve years old.”
So she sat there in her hospital bed and listened to the tragedy that had created in him an obsession to find other lost souls—and the psychic abilities to do it. And as he talked slowly, painfully, she saw the beginning of healing.
And knew the rest would come.
EPILOGUE
Friday, April 5
“Damn,” Samantha said.
“You’re trying too hard,” Lucas said, handing her his handkerchief.
She held the linen to her nose and peered at him in faint amusement. “Like you, I don’t know any other way to try. What is that, anyway?” With her free hand, she gestured to the twisted bit of metal on the table before her.
“What did you see?”
“Smoke, flames. Heard a crunching sound. Caught a glimpse of a man, I think, moving through the smoke. Looked like he was carrying a gasoline can.”
Lucas smiled. “Arson. The police chief who sent us this thought so but hasn’t been able to prove it. There was stored gasoline on the property, so finding traces of the fuel wasn’t proof of arson.”
“Okay. But my vision isn’t proof either.”
“No, but having his suspicions confirmed is all he wanted. He’ll work on the investigation the traditional way and hopefully find the proof he needs.”
“You still haven’t told me what this thing is.”
“An old car was parked in the garage of the building, and the chief suspected the fire started there. This is a piece of it.” Lucas picked up the twisted metal and returned it to the evidence bag. “I’ll have it returned to him.”
Samantha refolded the handkerchief and held it to her nose briefly, then checked the cloth and gave it back to him. “You know, I’ve been waiting for you to tell me to buy my own handkerchiefs, or at least start carrying tissues, but you never do.”
“My husbandly duty.”
Samantha started laughing. “Was that in the vows? Because I don’t remember it.”
“Right after the ‘for better or worse’ part, I think.” He pulled her up from her chair, smiling, and into his arms.
“We’re at work,” she reminded him.
“We’re off the clock,” he countered. “Just stopped by to clear this last thing off my desk before we leave. And I’m hoping we get out of here before Bishop finds another case for us.”
Entering the room just in time to hear that, Bishop said, “Would I be that cruel?” And when Samantha appeared to consider the matter seriously, he smiled and added, “No, I wouldn’t. Besides, we’ve an unusually light caseload at the moment.”
“Is that why Quentin is among the missing?” Samantha wanted to know. “Finally taking his vacation time?”
“Yeah, but it’s a busman’s holiday,” Bishop replied. “A cold
case he wants to reopen.”
“Sounds tame enough,” Lucas commented.
“With Quentin involved?” Bishop shook his head. “The last off-the-clock case he worked got Kendra shot.”
“Then let’s hope he finds nothing but dusty paperwork,” Samantha offered.
“It would be a welcome change. Especially since things are nice and quiet around here.”
“Here you are,” Miranda told him as she came into the room. “And bite your tongue. All it takes is for one of us to comment on not being busy, and we find the entire unit snowed under with cases.”
“Then,” her husband said, “I suggest we get out of here ourselves.”
“Now, there’s an idea.” She smiled at the other couple. “I say you two take off and enjoy your honeymoon. We’ll still be here when you get back. And you,” she added to her husband, “owe me dinner. I was right about that lawyer.”
“I’m not arguing.” Bishop took his wife’s hand and said to the other two, “Have fun. And don’t come back a day early.”
“We won’t,” Lucas promised.
Gazing after the other couple, Samantha said musingly, “Bishop and Miranda, Tony and Kendra, Isabel and Rafe, you and me. Is there another unit in the FBI with four married teams?”
“No. But, then, there’s no other unit like the SCU, is there?”
“True enough.” She smiled up at him. “The carnival seems like a long way away. And a long time ago.”
“Do you miss it?”
“No. The life we have . . .” She shook her head a little. “Beyond anything I ever dreamed of having. In case I haven’t said thank you—”
Lucas kissed her and said, “You have. And I have. And now we’re going to spend a couple of weeks lying on a Florida beach saying all the other things we want to say, and all the things we couldn’t say before now—and probably a few things one too many margaritas will make us say.”
Samantha started laughing.
“You’ve never seen me after one too many margaritas,” he warned her solemnly.