A Deadly Web

by Kay Hooper

  “Tasha—”

  “Please. As soon as possible, John.”

  “Tasha, you’re being watched. Very closely.”

  “She can meet us at the coffee shop. And you can . . . sit a few tables away. Still watching out for me. Still being a Guardian.”

  “Murphy doesn’t have a connection to you yet, not a visible one obvious to the other side. We don’t like to expose all our soldiers. It’s bad strategy. And her part in all this usually keeps her on the periphery of things and in the dark.”

  “John.” Tasha’s voice was very steady, and she still refused to look at him. “I realize there are risks. But I have a feeling Murphy will agree with me that I have a good reason for her to come out of the shadows.” She almost but not quite laughed. “That phrase is never going to mean the same thing, is it? At least to some of us. Out of the shadows.”

  To say that Brodie was curious by then was to grossly understate the matter. He brushed aside phrases corrupted by this war. “You don’t believe I can keep secrets?” he demanded. “Now, after all this?”

  “It’s not your secret to keep.” She looked at him finally, her eyes dark and still. “It’s mine. For now, at least. John, I need to talk to Murphy. I need to talk to her as soon as possible.” She was reasonably sure Brodie had never known the name of the man who had killed his wife, but what she wasn’t sure of was whether he had caught a glimpse, or had later—in what must have been an obsessive search—uncovered information that might now identify Eliot Wolfe to him.

  Eliot Wolfe, who was a born psychic. Eliot Wolfe, whose campaign schedule, shown on TV, included a fund-raiser here in Charleston less than two weeks away.

  Eliot Wolfe, who had once been part of the eugenics program of the other side—and probably, certainly, still was. Just waiting for his genetic match to be identified, his mate seduced or compelled to join with him.

  As Elizabeth Brodie had refused to do.

  Once Brodie knew that . . . Tasha wouldn’t have bet a dime on Wolfe’s survival. What she wasn’t at all sure of was what was best to do, both for Brodie’s sake and for their side of this war. Because identifying a player on the other side, especially one who seemed destined to take his place in a high position of state government—quite possibly as a stepping-stone to a national position—could be useful . . . later on.

  Unless Brodie killed Wolfe.

  “I don’t like it, Tasha.”

  “I didn’t expect you to. Get in touch with Murphy, John. Please. I need to see her as soon as possible.”

  It was patently clear Brodie wasn’t happy about it, but he did call Murphy, and twenty minutes later Tasha was sitting across from her at Tasha’s regular table at the coffee shop—with Brodie about four tables away and not happy about that, either. Especially since Murphy had her back to him, and she prevented him from being able to see Tasha.

  Tasha waited until the waitress she had thought of as innocuous brought them coffee and muffins, taking the time to get a good look at Murphy, since they had met only once and in the dark.

  She was a tall woman with short and rather spiky blond hair—a curious and youthful, almost punk style that suited her narrow face and sharp green eyes. She also dressed in a youthful, slightly rebellious sort of style, from the thermal shirt underneath her worn black leather jacket to the khaki pants sporting several belts, and lace-up combat boots that didn’t seem at all incongruous on her fairly small feet.

  She carried a worn leather bag more satchel than purse, slung across from shoulder to opposite hip, and Tasha had the feeling that if she’d had to leave everything behind her at a moment’s notice, Murphy would have everything she needed in that bag.

  When the waitress delivered their order and then left with a smile, Murphy said calmly, “She’s one of them, I take it.”

  “I was trying not to let anything show,” Tasha managed.

  “Yeah, that’s when most people do.” Murphy smiled briefly, her vivid green eyes watchful. “Don’t worry, I doubt she saw it. I did. Brodie did, even four tables away. Why is he, by the way?”

  “You’re psychic, right?” Tasha kept her voice low, casual. She sipped her latte.

  “Yeah. Sort of a telepath.”

  “Sort of a telepath?”

  “I pick up things sometimes, once I’m tapped in. But what I’m really good at is serving as a conduit so one telepath who’s . . . out of range . . . can communicate with another.”

  Tasha stared at her. “That voice in my head.”

  “Another one of our people. She needed to try to communicate with you. To . . . make you aware of what was going on so that when Brodie approached you, it wouldn’t be a total shock.”

  “I haven’t met her yet.”

  It wasn’t a question, but Murphy answered anyway. “No, she’s outside the perimeter Duran has set up around you. Safer that way.”

  “Does Duran know about her?”

  “About her, yes; she was a target not so long ago. But I doubt he knows she’s nearby. She has a hell of a shield and, unlike most of us, can use her abilities even with it up. Duran has psychics of his own to sense us, but as far as we know he’s had only one here.”

  “Astrid. I sort of met her.”

  “In the maze, yeah. You gave her a pretty bad headache with that. Our other psychic made it considerably worse so she’ll be no good to Duran for another day or two.”

  “Sarah Mackenzie.”

  Murphy’s brows rose.

  “I . . . picked that up from Brodie.”

  “So it’s true, you two are connected.”

  “I’m not sure exactly how that works.” Tasha realized she was picking at her muffin and frowned down at the crumbs. “I think it happened in the maze, but I don’t know why. It seems . . . intermittent, that contact. Sometimes I know what he’s thinking without really knowing the words. Sometimes I pick up emotions. Other times, I—I have the feeling I could see as deeply into him as I wanted to. If I wanted to.”

  “You don’t?”

  “It’s an intrusion. An unwelcome one. He hasn’t said, but I know it makes him uneasy to know we’re connected at all. He doesn’t want to be connected. To anyone.”

  “Yeah, that’s Brodie.” Murphy straightened her shoulders and said, briskly but still quietly, “I think you wanted to see me for something besides small talk.”

  Tasha hesitated, then said, “How much do you know about Brodie’s wife?” This time, her voice was low.

  Murphy’s eyes narrowed. “The bare facts, like most everyone else. She was a psychic. He loved her. They were married. She was murdered. Not one of the fake murders we all know about; she literally died in his arms. About ten years ago. And Brodie never found her killer. That’s why he’s in this war of ours. At least until you came along and you two connected however it is you connected, the stake Brodie had in this war was emotional. The need to protect psychics. The drive for answers. For justice.”

  “For revenge?”

  “Maybe. Maybe he’s entitled.”

  Tasha looked up, straight into the steady gaze of her companion. “The question is, if someone could tell him why she was murdered, and by who, should they? Even if the man who murdered Elizabeth Brodie, who is also psychic and quite definitely on the other side, may one day be governor of this state?”

  —

  Katie Swan said, “I can’t.” She said it, by now, like a litany. Like a plea. Please stop. Please let me go home. I won’t tell anyone. I promise, I’ll never tell anyone.

  Jesus, who would believe me anyway?

  “Try again.” The voice was cold, implacable, remorseless. It might have been a machine, repeating the command again and again with no sign of frustration or impatience.

  Before Katie on the stainless steel table lay a dagger, turned so that it was aimed, roughly, at a man-shaped stuffed target acros
s the room. It was, perhaps, ten feet away from her.

  It might as well have been ten miles.

  Katie had passed exhaustion a long time ago. They had broken her down first with the pain, using some technique she couldn’t begin to understand; it had felt like they were tearing her body apart, ripping it to shreds, and yet she hadn’t, afterward, been able to find a single mark anywhere on her.

  They had allowed her to sleep, or maybe they had drugged her, because however long she slept, she had awakened still exhausted, aching all over. Then they had put her in this room, and one by one a succession of objects had been placed before her, and she had been ordered to move them with her mind.

  Easy things at first. A feather. A pencil. A little book.

  Then harder things. Heavier things. Larger things.

  She had tried for countless minutes to move a cinder block placed on the table. It hadn’t budged until something in Katie had snapped, and she had cried out in frustration.

  The heavy piece of masonry not only lifted, it literally flew across the room and crashed into the glass protecting her tormentor, safe in her little watcher’s booth.

  The glass—or whatever it was—had not shown even a scratch. The cinder block was in pieces on the floor. And the face behind the window had never changed expression.

  “Again,” she had ordered.

  They weren’t stupid. Between every “test” Katie was ordered to blindfold herself, ordered to place her hands flat on the table, and ordered to remain motionless while someone entered and placed the next object on the table. Then she was to remove her blindfold—the chains fastened at either end to the table and the heavy metal bands around her wrists just long enough to allow that movement—place her hands flat on the table again, and use her telekinetic ability on whatever they had given her to move.

  She had simply refused at first, only to find that the cuffs were yet another instrument of torture, jolting her with intensely painful shocks that increased in intensity every time she refused.

  So she stopped refusing.

  But she was so tired.

  “Try again,” the emotionless woman behind the glass ordered, her voice perfectly clear even though Katie couldn’t see a sign of a speaker anywhere in her stainless steel box of a room.

  A faint warning tingle around her wrists made Katie focus on the target across the room. On the red circle drawn just where a human heart would be located. She stared at the target, then at the dagger on the table. It twitched, perhaps an inch or two.

  “Try again.”

  “I couldn’t kill a person,” she whispered.

  “It’s a stuffed target. Try again.”

  “I need to rest. I’ll do better after I’ve rested.”

  “Try again.”

  “Something to eat—”

  A stronger shock.

  Katie whimpered and tried to focus on the dagger. This was not close to the heaviest thing she had moved, or the largest. But this time she had been ordered to aim, to be precise. To hit a target.

  Something she had never done before, with the single exception of mentally pulling something toward herself and reaching out to catch it in her hand. A pen. A book she’d been reading. The TV remote.

  This was so, so different.

  Frightened and wary of the shock, she tried to bargain. “If I do it, if I hit the target, then you’ll let me rest.”

  “Of course,” her tormentor said with suspicious promptness.

  Desperate to rest, to be out of this horrible room if only for an hour or two, Katie concentrated, and with all the strength and focus she could muster, she made the dagger lift—and then shoot across the room and hit the stuffed target.

  “You missed the heart. Do it again.”

  —

  Grace Seymore lived in a nice little house in a nice little neighborhood where, apparently, most of her neighbors had been certain she had simply gone to visit family and would return.

  Which she had. And according to the cop who was Bishop’s source, she had returned with as little fanfare as when she had left.

  “I really don’t know why you worried about me,” Grace said to Bishop and his wife as she poured tea for them. In little flowered cups. “I was just visiting family.”

  “So you said.” It was easy for Bishop to keep his voice even and casual because he’d had a lot of practice, but even he had a difficult time keeping his gaze off what was without question a quite substantial baby bump. “Did you go home to share the good news?” he added.

  “About the baby? Oh, no, not really. It was only an aunt and cousin, all I have left of family, so really just a visit. We’d been out of touch.”

  “But they were happy for you,” Miranda probed carefully.

  “I suppose.” Grace appeared thoughtful, both hands caressing her rounded belly. “I didn’t really care. Don’t care. The baby and I will be just fine.” She smiled.

  Bishop tossed tact out the window. “What about the father?” he asked bluntly.

  “Oh, he won’t be involved. We met on a cruise, you see. He didn’t want a baby. But I want her. And I can raise her just fine on my own.” Her smile widened. “We’ll be fine.”

  “Your ex-husband—”

  “He’s not part of this. He didn’t want me, we both know that. He didn’t understand me, didn’t understand the things I can do. But my baby will understand, because she’ll be able to do those things too.”

  Miranda exchanged a glance with her husband, then said, “Grace, you know that Noah looks out for people like you. For psychics. When you disappeared, we did some checking. You didn’t go on a cruise.”

  “Of course I did. Months ago.” She was still smiling. “Listen, I really appreciate the concern, but I’m fine, as you can see. We’re both fine. So there’s nothing to worry about.” Her oddly blank gaze shifted to Bishop. “And no reason to look out for me. I am grateful, Bishop, you know that, but I really don’t need anyone looking out for me. I can take care of myself. And the baby, of course.”

  Miranda tried again. “Grace—”

  “Really, Miranda, we’ll both be fine. I’ll let you know when the baby’s born, and you can come visit. See for yourselves that we’re just fine.”

  Once again, Miranda exchanged a glance with her husband, both of them certain that as soon as they stepped out the front door, Grace would forget all about them. The only thing in her mind was the child she would deliver, probably within only a few weeks.

  They finally said their good-byes and left, a last image of a smiling Grace waving good-bye from her front door a haunting one for them both.

  Miranda said, “She doesn’t have any family, does she? Not even an aunt or cousin.”

  “No, and Murphy was right.” Bishop’s tone was grim. “The woman in that house is not Grace Seymore, not anymore.”

  “They did that, didn’t they? They got her pregnant, and before that they made her somebody else.” Miranda shivered visibly. “You know what I kept thinking?”

  Even with their easy telepathic link closed down, Bishop knew. “The same things I was thinking. Stepford wives, and pod people.”

  “I think it’s time we talked to Brodie and Murphy. They need to know.”

  “You won’t get an argument,” Bishop replied, and put the car in gear.

  —

  Tucker Mackenzie frowned down at his laptop. “Okay, this is unexpected but not all that unusual.”

  “What is?” his wife asked.

  “Tasha Solomon was adopted. As an infant.”

  “Do you think she knows?”

  Tucker’s frown deepened. “I sort of doubt it. I had to dig for information, and dig deeply. If she was aware of the adoption, I doubt there would have been so many layers.”

  Sarah came and joined him at the dining table in their hotel suite, coff
ee in hand and wearing a frown of her own. It was early morning, and both had been up most of the night. “Well . . . as you say, not so unusual. So why did Murphy want her parentage checked out? To find out if she was a born psychic? We already know that.”

  “Maybe . . . to find out if her real parents were born psychics.”

  After a moment, Sarah said, “Can you find out?”

  “Maybe. Adoption records are sealed, but I long ago found a crowbar to unseal official documents.”

  “You’re very bad,” Sarah said, but absently, adding almost immediately, “If Tasha’s real parents were psychics, do we assume they’re connected to the other side?”

  Typing briskly on his keyboard, Tucker said, “Not sure. Duran likes tools, so they could have been that, just tools, a means to an end.”

  “Psychic babies?”

  “We’ve talked about it being possible. Maybe this is the first evidence we’ll find to prove it’s more than possible. First, we have to find out if she was in the official adoption system or this was a private adoption. We need to know if her mother was an unwed mother. If she was compensated for giving birth and, if so, how well and by whom. If there’s even any record of who the father was. And, if possible, we need to find out where Tasha’s birth mother is now.”

  Sarah frowned. “Because if she was connected or being used by the other side . . .”

  “Then unless she died in childbirth, it’s doubtful she only had one child. Not if they were using her in this breeding program we’ve been theorizing. The one I really hope we’re wrong about.”

  Sarah leaned back slowly, her frown gone but replaced by a bleak expression. “Tasha’s close to thirty. If we’re right about this . . . program . . . she could be among the first generations of psychics deliberately produced by breeding two born psychics.”

  “Could be why Duran wants her so badly,” Tucker noted, still typing.

  “But wouldn’t he have her? I mean, if she was part of this eugenics program, wouldn’t their side have kept track, and closely? If they have a particular use in mind for their—their offspring—then why allow her to grow up in a normal life with normal, nonpsychic parents?”