Whisper of Evil

by Kay Hooper

  She turned her head again, scanning the room, more seconds passing, then gasped suddenly, her cheeks flooding with color that quickly receded to leave her even more pale than she had been before. Whatever she saw, it was clearly a distinct and unwelcome shock.

  Max’s fingers closed on her arm. “Nell?”

  Like that first time in the woods, she didn’t immediately respond to him. She was unnaturally still, and her unblinking eyes seemed to grow even darker and more distant.

  A minute passed.

  Two.

  “Nell?” He caught her other arm and turned her fully toward him. She allowed herself to be moved as though she were a puppet, boneless and unprotesting, with an obliviousness to any possible danger. It scared the hell out of him.

  “Goddammit, Nell—” He shook her.

  She blinked, looked up at him in bewilderment as her eyes slowly lightened and resumed their normal green color. But she looked confused, and her face remained pale. Too pale. “Max? What—”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Of course I’m all right—” The words were barely out of her mouth when she winced and gasped, clearly in pain. She reached for her left temple, fingers massaging in an automatic motion. “No,” she half whispered.

  “Nell, what’s wrong?”

  “It doesn’t happen like this, it’s not supposed to happen like this—”

  “Nell—”

  “Not without warning,” she murmured. She looked at him with the strangest mixture of anger and helplessness, then closed her eyes, gave a little sigh, and went totally limp in his arms.

  Nate McCurry wasn’t at all sure he had done the right thing, but he didn’t see that he had much choice. He had to protect himself, didn’t he? And what else could he do?

  It hadn’t taken him long at all to decide that he couldn’t take what he knew to the sheriff. If Nate’s suspicions in that quarter were right, Ethan Cole knew just as much as he did and was keeping quiet about it because he was scared too.

  Which was sobering on several counts, but mostly because it was well known Ethan wasn’t scared of much.

  So Nate had carefully considered the remaining members of the sheriff’s department and arranged a quiet meeting with the one cop he thought he could trust, the boyhood pal with whom he’d sneaked cigarettes under the bleachers in the gym during pep rallies and committed Halloween pranks that had very nearly gotten them both arrested.

  That had been a long time ago, but they had remained casual acquaintances in the years since, and Nate thought if there was anybody who’d understand his fright and not condemn him for it, it was an old pal who had puked on his shoes when they’d both inadvertently witnessed, to their fascinated horror, two of their teachers passionately making out in a coat closet at school.

  Nate had been about twelve at the time.

  He still had nightmares about that one, and was half convinced that the sight of old Mr. Hensen’s pale, freckled hands groping beneath the rucked-up skirt of Mrs. Gamble and pawing her exposed, fleshy breasts had made his own sex life as an adult something of a problem.

  Not that he mentioned that, of course, even to his childhood friend.

  “I know what I’m talking about,” he said insistently, trying not to glance nervously around even though they were alone here in the alley behind the drugstore. “I’ve thought and thought, and it’s the only thing we all have in common. I mean, I’m not sure about George, but the other three for damned sure. And me.”

  “You’re wrong, Nate. You have to be. She left a long time ago.”

  “Did she? Or did she just leave Silence but stay close by to have her revenge on us? Peter Lynch died last summer, remember? Not so long after she supposedly left, and he’d treated her like shit, she told me so. Luke Ferrier had too, and as for Randal Patterson, she said he went way over the line, really hurt her when all she expected were a few games.”

  “So what’d she expect from you, Nate?”

  Nate grimaced. “A good time, far as I could tell. But she was just weird, you know? Intense one minute and laughing like a hyena the next. Really something between the sheets, I’ll give her that, but ... She was more than I could handle, and I don’t mind admitting it.”

  “So you dumped her.”

  “It wasn’t like that. I just told her she wanted more than I could give her. And she laughed when I told her that. Laughed and tossed her head and said I’d be sorry. She said that, actually said I’d be sorry.”

  “And I guess you are, Nate.”

  “Oh, Christ, am I ever. And it makes sense, right? That it’s her? That she came back to get even and now she’s after all of us?”

  “Nate—”

  “Don’t give me that pitying look, goddammit. I know it’s her, and one of you cops should know it too. I know everybody says this is about punishing men for their secrets and sins, and I’m saying it’s the sin of being with her and then treating her like dirt that we’re all supposed to pay for. She’s making damned sure we do.”

  “Do you have any proof of that, Nate, or is this just you being paranoid?”

  “It’s your job to find proof, isn’t it? And you can do that now that I’ve told you where to look. You can find proof, and you can find her, and the whole damned sheriff’s department will throw you a big fucking party. Especially Ethan Cole. Hell, he’ll probably throw you a fucking parade.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Because he’s probably worried about his own ass. He’s been in her bed too.”

  It was characteristic of the blackouts that Nell woke abruptly, without the drowsy sensation that usually accompanied waking from a true sleep. One moment she was out cold, deep in an utterly dreamless unconsciousness, and the next her eyes were open and she was completely alert.

  So when she woke, her first very clear realization was that she was in a strange house.

  She was lying on a comfortable bed, fully dressed but for her shoes and jacket, and was covered by a thin blanket. A couple of open windows brought in the light of a dying day as well as a cool breeze. And the muted sounds of voices.

  Nell threw back the blanket and slid from the bed. A glance at her watch showed her she’d been out for a little less than an hour, which was usual. It was just after five. She looked around the room, studying the gleaming dark wood furniture, the beautiful old rug covering much of the wood floor. There were no photographs she could see, but several very good oil landscapes lent the room a peaceful, old-world quality.

  And, faintly, she could smell Max’s cologne.

  “Oh, hell,” she muttered beneath her breath, more unsettled than she wanted to admit even to herself.

  She went to one of the windows, standing to one side to carefully peer through the gauzy curtains. This second-floor room was at the front of the house, so Nell found herself looking down onto the front drive and a neat, well-cared-for yard.

  A sheriff’s department cruiser was parked in the drive.

  The two deputies stood on either side of the car, both facing Max, seemingly relaxed and casual in that deceptively unthreatening posture most cops had when they were intent on not looking as tough as they actually were. And Max stood near the front of the car, not quite blocking their access to the house, arms crossed over his chest in body language that was guarded at best—and hostile at worst.

  The murmur of voices was indistinct at first, and Nell concentrated, focusing on sight and hearing so she could channel a bit of extra energy to enhance those senses as she’d been taught to do. Bishop was the best at it, using what Miranda had long ago nicknamed his spider sense, but he had taught most of his agents to use a form of the same ability. And it did come in handy at times. Like now.

  “. . . so we’re not picking on you, Max,” Deputy Venable was saying matter-of-factly. “Sheriff’s got us checking on everybody in the area.”

  His partner, the gorgeous Lauren Champagne, added in the same tone, “The whole town is jumpy, you know that. So we’re
providing the most visible police presence we can muster.”

  “And visiting every house individually?” Max demanded skeptically.

  “The outlying ones, sure.” It was Lauren who answered, smiling faintly. But her dark eyes were watchful. “And we’re asking everyone to report anything they consider odd, no matter how insignificant it seems.”

  “Most of us are pulling double shifts so we have more patrols out at all times,” Kyle Venable added. “Just give us a call, and we can be here within minutes.”

  “Okay. I’ll do that. If I notice anything odd.”

  Nell grimaced, recognizing a dismissal that couldn’t have been more blunt unless he’d told them flatly to get the hell off his property. The two deputies exchanged glances again, then shrugged in tandem and got back into their cruiser.

  Without waiting to watch them leave, Nell went into the adjoining bathroom to splash water on her face and finger-comb her hair into its usual unfussy style. She wanted to avoid even glancing into the mirror over the vanity, but in the end stared somewhat grimly at her reflection. She was aware that she was too pale but was far more disturbed by the faint purple shadows beneath her eyes.

  They hadn’t been there yesterday.

  And today, for the first time ever, she had blacked out twice, the second time with a warning of only a minute or two instead of the twenty or so minutes she was accustomed to.

  What was happening to her?

  Like most of the other psychics she knew, Nell lived with the knowledge that the very sensitivity to and ability to interpret electrical energies and magnetic fields that was genetically hardwired into her brain might eventually damage that brain. Especially if she pushed herself and those abilities, used them too often, or for too long at a time.

  No one really knew what might happen, but the possibilities were scary.

  And for the psychic members of the SCU, there was also the awareness that the very work they had chosen to do could well increase their risk of, as Nell had flippantly put it to Max, waking up one day with their brains fried. Unlike psychics not involved in law enforcement, they didn’t have the luxury of allowing their abilities to control them, of waiting around passively and merely allowing the abilities to come when they would.

  No, the SCU psychics struggled always to master and use every ability they possessed, often under extremely stressful and dangerous situations and frequently pushing themselves to their limits—and beyond—because that effort could mean the difference between catching the monsters they hunted and allowing those animals another day, or week, or year of freedom in which to destroy more innocent lives.

  For some of the psychics, it was likely there would be a heavy price demanded sooner or later. Certain psychic abilities required a great deal of physical stamina, for instance, while others appeared to actually create increasingly powerful electromagnetic fields within the brain itself.

  Nell belonged to the latter group.

  She had been matter-of-fact and cool about the risks to Max, but the truth was that Bishop kept an unusually close eye on her simply because her abilities were unique even in his considerable experience of the paranormal, and nobody could even hazard a guess as to how much sheer electrical energy her brain was capable of producing—and capable of surviving.

  It was beginning to look like she was closer to her limits than she had ever been before.

  Nell watched the haunted-looking woman in the mirror bite her lip, then turned away with a muttered curse. Worrying about it, she knew, wouldn’t change a damned thing. All she could do was try to get to the bottom of these murders as quickly as she possibly could.

  She found her shoes and put them on, then picked up her jacket and fished her cell phone out of the pocket.

  “Yeah.” His voice was, as always, calm and curiously implacable, like something deeply rooted and utterly certain of itself and its place in the universe.

  She envied him that.

  “It’s me. Are you nearby?”

  “About a hundred yards from the house. Close as I could get without being seen. I was going to give it another fifteen minutes and then come in after you. Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. Just woke up.”

  “Two blackouts in one day is not fine, Nell.”

  “Okay, maybe I overstated that.” She tried to make her voice amused and unconcerned. “But I’m up and functional.”

  “I don’t like this.”

  “I’m not crazy about it either. But it’s the only game in town and you know it.”

  “Yeah, well, there’s something else I know. Word from on high is we’d better all watch our backs. That shadow on the photograph is just what we thought it was.”

  “Shit. I was hoping we were wrong.” Nell tried to ignore the chill crawling up and down her spine. It was becoming a familiar sensation.

  “No such luck. He’s watching you, Nell, or at least was that once. And we have no way of knowing why.”

  “But we have to assume he’s on to me somehow.”

  “That’s the general consensus. He either knows who and what you are or else doesn’t know but perceives you as a threat. Maybe because he’s psychic. If you’ve encountered him casually since you got here, he could have gotten some sense of your abilities and realized you might be able to stop him.”

  She drew a deep breath. “Okay. Then I have to move faster.”

  “Faster means you could get careless.”

  “And slower means I could get dead.”

  He swore.

  Nell didn’t wait for him to offer more objections, just said, “Any luck finding Hailey?”

  “Not yet. You did say she’d be likely to change her name whether or not she married Sabella, and maybe change other stuff as well.”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’ll make it harder.”

  “I know. But we need to find her.”

  “Another tie to her in the Patterson house?” he guessed.

  “You could say that.”

  He didn’t ask for details, just said, “Then I’ll light a fire under the boys at Quantico. And in the meantime?”

  She knew what he was asking. “In the meantime ... I have to think of something to tell Max.”

  “How about the truth?”

  “Which one?” she demanded ruefully.

  “The only one he’s interested in, I’d say. He carried you back here, you know. Held you across his lap the whole way. On horseback yet. Impressed the hell out of me.”

  It impressed Nell too, but she wasn’t willing to admit that. “He’s always been a natural horseman.”

  “And a white knight?”

  “Some men are like that.”

  “I wouldn’t know. Look, a couple of deputies showed up a few minutes ago.”

  “Yeah, I saw them.”

  “I hear they’re patrolling all over the parish to keep a close eye on citizens and paying particular attention to the more out-of-the-way places, like this ranch. And your place. If they go by there and find you gone even though your Jeep’s in the drive, they might start asking awkward questions.”

  “I’ll say I went riding with Max. Nobody will be surprised.”

  “He didn’t tell them you were here.”

  “Nobody would be surprised by that either.”

  He chuckled suddenly. “You know, if this situation weren’t such a deadly one, I’d love to sit peacefully on the sidelines and watch you two figure out your relationship.”

  “You’ve never sat peacefully on the sidelines in your life.”

  “Always a first time.” His voice sobered. “The blackouts are a warning, Nell, you know that. You can’t go on pushing yourself and expect to keep getting away with it.”

  “I know.”

  “So be careful.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “Why doesn’t that reassure me?” Without waiting for a response, he broke the connection.

  Nell slowly returned the phone to her pocket. Under her bre
ath, she murmured, “Probably for the same reason it doesn’t reassure me. Because I’m running out of time.”

  Ethan Cole had brooded about it all day. He wanted to blame Shelby for putting the idea into his head, but the truth was, he’d been thinking for at least a couple of days that maybe he’d see if there was anything Nell Gallagher could tell him about the series of murders in Silence.

  Not that he believed in any of that psychic bullshit, of course. And he wasn’t anxious to have the town gossips speculating as to his interest in Nell; Shelby had been right about that, damn her.

  But he had a feeling Nell could tell him something useful, and he wasn’t prepared to examine that feeling too closely. It was all mixed up with other feelings, like the desire to see Nell again, talk to her. Like his growing need to settle with Max and put the past behind them once and for all. Like the sensation of dread that had been hanging over him and getting stronger with every day that passed.

  And like the uneasy sense that what was happening in his town was darker and more twisted than anything he could imagine.

  Uglier than anything he could understand.

  But he meant to do his job, and doing his job meant he needed to talk to Nell as soon as possible. That was very clear and perfectly reasonable and logical. She was a potential source of information, that was all. To do his job effectively, he really should go and talk to her.

  So when the patrol checking things out at the Gallagher place reported in that she wasn’t anywhere about even though her Jeep was parked in the driveway, he took advantage of the chance.

  “Never mind, Steve,” he told Deputy Critcher. “She’s probably out walking in the woods.” Or out riding with Max, he added silently, the way she used to. “We can’t chase after every citizen in the parish just because they go out to stretch their legs and get some air. I’ll send somebody to check on her tomorrow morning or do it myself.”

  “Okay, Sheriff. You want us to stick around ’til she comes back home?”

  “No, that’s okay. Continue your patrol.”

  “Copy that. Over and out.”

  Ethan absently set his radio’s microphone aside and leaned back until his chair creaked, then frowned as he noticed Justin Byers standing in the doorway of the office.