Whisper of Evil

by Kay Hooper

  “You don’t remember?”

  Nell thought about it and, slowly, everything came back to her. Or most everything, anyway. “Is Kyle dead?”

  “Yes.” Max grimaced. “Even though it took a bullet from almost every gun we had to bring him down. And even then, he still managed to shoot you.”

  Which explained the constriction she felt in her arm and shoulder. Heavy bandages, from the feel of them. Nell fumbled with her right hand until she found the bed’s controls, then used them to raise the head a few inches.

  “Ouch,” she said again as her shoulder began to throb in concert with her head. “The bullet didn’t hit anything vital, did it?”

  “Amazingly enough, no. Passed right through. The doc says most of the heavy bandages can come off by tomorrow, and then you’ll wear a sling for a week or so. He says you heal fast.”

  Nell eyed him, perfectly aware that his level and unemotional tone was about as stable as nitro. The psychic door between them was securely closed; she had slammed it shut the second she had realized Kyle would probably shoot her, knowing too well that Max would have shared her pain—and possibly more than that. But even without the direct communication, she knew Max Tanner pretty well. “I feel fine,” she told him. “Rested, in fact. How long have I been out?”

  “It’s nearly five. Sunday afternoon.”

  She blinked. “What? I slept all day?”

  “The doc also said you seemed to need rest—the body’s way of healing itself. Galen informed me that you’d been shot before and had slept for hours that time too.”

  “Is that what this is about?”

  “What?”

  “You’re upset because I was shot before?”

  Max drew a breath and let it out slowly, the picture of a man holding on to his temper or his patience. “I’m upset you were shot at all. Either time. Both times. You’ll have to forgive me. Seeing you lying there bleeding is not destined to be one of my favorite memories.”

  “It doesn’t happen often. Most agents go through their entire careers hardly drawing their guns, much less getting shot.”

  “It’s happened to you twice. And how long have you been an agent?”

  Nell smiled at him. “I’m fine, Max. Really.”

  He stared at her for a moment, then reached over and took her free hand in his. “Don’t do that to me again. Ever.”

  “I’ll certainly try not to. It wasn’t much fun.”

  “Is that why you slammed the door shut? So I wouldn’t be able to feel what happened to you?”

  “I didn’t want to shut you out. But I had to then. Feeling what I felt could have incapacitated you just when you needed to move or react.”

  Max hesitated, then spoke slowly. “Look, last night showed me pretty clearly both the benefits and the drawbacks of sharing a connection with you. So I understand better now why you’d prefer to keep the door closed most of the time.”

  “But?”

  “But ... all through those years without you, knowing that door was there, always there, and I couldn’t do a damned thing to open it myself, was...”

  “Frustrating? Maddening?”

  “Painful.”

  She held his gaze steadily. “Another drawback of hitching your fate to a psychic’s. I’m sorry, Max, but I don’t know any way to change that, to give you any kind of control over it. I think—all that reading you did over the years, you must have been searching for an answer. Right?”

  “Yeah, more or less.”

  “You didn’t find one.”

  A breath of a laugh escaped him. “Hell, I didn’t find anything that even came close to explaining what had happened between us, let alone offered a suggestion of how I could become an active rather than a passive participant.”

  Nell chose her words carefully, all too aware that, despite love, Max could well decide in the end that hitching his fate to a psychic was not a future he wanted. “Is that what you want? To be psychic yourself ? Or is it more a matter of control, really?”

  “It’s a matter of sharing, Nell. I don’t have to be psychic myself, not if you’re willing—truly willing—to open yourself up to me. In the bad times as well as the good ones.”

  “If the door had been open when I got shot, you would have felt that, Max. I told you, it could have—”

  “It could have gotten me hurt, yeah. But if it’s a choice of hurts, then I choose sharing yours and risking whatever happens afterward. Because even with the distractions and potential problems of keeping that door open, every time you close it in my face I feel like you’re pushing me out of your life. Every time. And that hurts.”

  “I don’t mean to shut you out. I never wanted to do that.”

  “You’re shutting me out now.” He shook his head. “I got enough last night to realize that you’re pretty sure that the darkness you’ve felt in yourself all these years was Kyle somehow. His evil, not yours. That’s true, isn’t it?”

  “I ... think so. I can’t be sure, of course, but I knew as soon as I woke up that there was a lightness in me I’d never felt before. As if a weight had lifted. But there’s no guarantee, Max. Nothing to say my abilities won’t eventually ... break my mind in some way.”

  “I’m willing to risk it. I’ve had twelve years of being without you, Nell, and the one thing I know absolutely is that being with you is what I want.”

  “And my work? It’s important to me.”

  “I know it is,” he said immediately. “I would never ask you to give that up.”

  “Your ranch is here. Your life is here.”

  “We’ll find a way to make it work, Nell. All you have to do is say it’s what you want too.”

  “You make it sound so simple,” she murmured.

  “That part of it is. Tell me you love me and want to spend the rest of your life with me. Everything else will take care of itself in time.”

  “Max—”

  “It really is that simple, you know. All the rest is just a question of discussion and practice.”

  She had to laugh, albeit unsteadily. “Our future, boiled down to two sentences?”

  “Well, we’ll build on it.”

  Nell instinctively shifted to move toward him and winced as her shoulder throbbed a protest. “Maybe I’d better postpone any rash decisions until I have the use of both arms again.”

  Max lifted an eyebrow at her. “You’re stalling.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “That’s what it looks like from where I’m standing.”

  Nell laughed again, this time with more amusement. She was grateful that Max was backing off a bit, because despite his confident words she knew there was a lot for both of them to think about. “Maybe you should change positions,” she suggested.

  Max’s fingers tightened around hers and he began to move toward her, but then Ethan walked into the room, looking very tired and rather interesting with a square bandage over one temple.

  “So you’re awake,” he said to Nell. “Good. The doctors were about to sedate Max.”

  “Funny,” Max said.

  Nell smiled at Ethan. “You don’t look bad, all things considered.”

  “I feel like a fool,” he said frankly. “Trotting off cheerfully with the killer. Oh, yeah, some cop I am.”

  “Where were you supposed to be going with him?”

  “I’d asked him to ride with me out to Matt Thorton’s place. I had found something that bugged me in those birth records and wanted to ask him about it. I thought I was being smart in not going alone. Picked the wrong goddamned deputy to ride shotgun.”

  “You thought Thorton might be the killer?”

  “I just wanted to know why he’d told me when he was a kid that his real mother had died, when she hadn’t.”

  “And why had he?”

  Ethan grimaced. “He was pissed at her. She wouldn’t let him go on some stupid field trip, so he decided she wasn’t his real mother at all. Which would have been fine, except that he had to tell me his fa
ntasy.”

  Nell frowned. “Okay, but—what set off Kyle? I mean, why did he decide to kill you last night?”

  “I made the second mistake of telling him that I was going through the birth records. Looking for whatever got George Caldwell killed.”

  “Notice I’m saying nothing,” Max said.

  “You’re saying it loudly.”

  “Boys.” Nell shook her head. “So, did he happen to mention what did get Caldwell killed?”

  “He didn’t, but I intend to find whatever it was. Eventually.”

  “In the meantime,” Nell said, “where are the others?”

  “Back at the office,” Ethan answered. “Now that everybody’s out in the open, so to speak, working together to do all the reports and collect evidence seemed best.”

  “And,” Max said, “you might as well use FBI agents while you’ve got them, right?”

  “Right.”

  “What about Hailey?” Nell asked. “She wasn’t one of the storm troopers out at your place last night, was she, Ethan? Because I know she couldn’t shoot, and she always punched like a girl.”

  He moved around to the other side of her bed and frowned down at her. “No, Hailey wasn’t there. What made you think she would be?”

  “She’s the one who told me Kyle had you and was going to kill you. After she slapped me out of that sleepwalking stupor he’d put me in.” Nell frowned at him, then at Max. “She went for help. Didn’t she find you guys?”

  An odd expression on his face, Max said, “Nell, Hailey wasn’t there last night. She couldn’t have been.”

  “What do you mean? I saw her, Max. I talked to her. She was there.”

  “Nell,” Ethan said, after exchanging a glance with Max, “your boss got in touch a couple of hours ago. The ... remains you uncovered out at your grandmother’s place? The FBI lab was able to use dental records to make a match, a positive I.D. But it wasn’t your mother.”

  “It’s Hailey,” Max finished slowly. “Their estimate is that she’s been dead ever since she supposedly left Silence. Almost a year.”

  EPILOGUE

  MONDAY, MARCH 27

  Max was hardly a two-finger typist, but it wasn’t his best skill and getting his rather lengthy statement on paper was taking longer than he’d planned.

  “Why am I typing this?” he asked Ethan. “Isn’t one of your bright boys or girls supposed to do it?”

  “They’re busy,” Ethan told him.

  “Busy? Two-thirds of them are off-duty.”

  “After using up my overtime budget for the entire year, everybody’s going to be taking vacation and sick days for a while. It’s a statement, Max, you know how to write one up.”

  “Well, stop hovering, then.”

  “I’m not hovering. I just thought you might be interested in knowing that Nell’s boss is here.”

  Max stopped typing. “Bishop?”

  “Yep.”

  “What’s he doing here?”

  “Apparently just finished up another investigation in Chicago.”

  “So what’s he doing here?”

  Ethan grinned. “I’m trying to make out whether you consider him a rival or just somebody who’s going to spirit Nell back to Virginia.”

  Max refused to give him the satisfaction, and said only, “Answer my question. What’s he doing here?”

  “Tying up a few loose ends. Supplying some necessary paperwork, like that original FBI profile. Lending his expertise while we try to find answers for the few remaining questions. Gathering up his people.”

  “Where’s Nell?”

  “Talking to him in the conference room.”

  Max pushed his chair back and got up.

  “Statement finished?” Ethan asked politely.

  “Do not make me tell you what to do with your statement. I’ll finish it later.”

  Ethan laughed, but didn’t protest when Max left the office he’d been using and made his way through the mostly deserted sheriff’s department to the conference room.

  Despite Ethan’s goading, Max didn’t really consider Bishop a threat to his relationship with Nell, but he was intensely curious to meet the man. He paused in the doorway, noting that Galen was there—very relaxed with his feet propped up as he thumbed through the town newspaper. Justin and Shelby were also there, sitting at the far end of the conference table.

  Two other people were in the room. Nell was casual in jeans and a sweater, only the sling holding her left arm immobile a sign of the bullet wound in her shoulder. Yesterday’s shock over discovering that Hailey was dead—and had, apparently, appeared with amazing corporeality to help Nell—had not lingered very long; Nell was far more sanguine about such things than most people would have been.

  Her only wry comment had been that she should have known Hailey would try to control things to her liking even from beyond the grave.

  Now, composed as always, she was talking intently to the man half sitting on the conference table as they faced each other.

  He was a big man, probably somewhere in his late thirties, dressed as casually as the others, in dark pants and a black leather jacket. Obviously powerful, he had an athletic build and a way of holding himself that said he was very comfortable in his own skin.

  He was also good-looking in the dark, hawklike way that women seemed to love. Jet-black hair. The kind of tan that hadn’t come from a sunlamp. Movie-star good-looking, Max thought, eyeing that perfect profile with unease. Then Bishop turned his head suddenly, and Max felt a shock.

  The scar marking his left cheek was more distinctive than disfiguring and, added to the dramatic widow’s peak and the narrow streak of pure white hair just above his left temple, lent him an appearance as striking as it was unusual.

  This was one FBI agent, Max thought, who would rarely find it possible to work undercover.

  Max moved into the room to be introduced to Noah Bishop, and as they shook hands he noted that the handsome face was still and that the steady eyes probably seemed chilly due to their pale silvery color.

  Or maybe not.

  “Glad to finally meet you,” Bishop said, his voice deep and not quite as cool as those eyes.

  Max decided not to question that statement, merely saying, “An interesting unit you’ve put together, Agent Bishop. Nell told me you’re a telepath? A touch telepath, I think she said.”

  Hard mouth curving slightly, Bishop said, “That’s right.”

  “Which means ... what? That you can read someone’s mind when you touch them?” He tried not to feel wary over the fact that he had just shaken hands with the man.

  Bishop shrugged, still smiling faintly. “About sixty to seventy percent of the time, yeah.”

  Shelby said, “Who would have thunk it? Psychic FBI agents.”

  “What will they think of next,” Justin murmured.

  Max, who was determined not to ask if he fell into the percentage of people Bishop could read, met Nell’s steady, amused gaze and wondered suddenly if he was so transparent that a blind man could have read him, never mind a psychic.

  Galen spoke up then to say, “Not all of us are psychic, you know.”

  Bishop looked at him, brows lifting. “Well, technically you are.”

  “Only by your definition. And you’ll never make me believe that you didn’t add a footnote to the SCU manual just to make sure I’d have the qualifications for the job.”

  “There’s a manual?” Shelby looked from one to the other with brightly interested eyes.

  Max, who was more curious to know just how Galen fit into the SCU, opened his mouth to ask, but then forgot to when he saw Bishop look toward the door suddenly, his face changing rather dramatically.

  The agent began smiling—a real smile this time— and those chilly eyes warmed up about forty degrees, transforming him from a cool professional to a man who was very happy and didn’t give a damn who knew it. He moved past Max toward the doorway, and Max turned just in time to see the gorgeous, smiling Lauren Champagne
come into the room and get lifted off her feet in a welcoming hug.

  Somewhat blankly, Justin said, “I take it they know each other.”

  “You could say that.” Nell grinned. “You could also say they’re married.”

  Max stared at her. “You never mentioned Bishop was married.”

  “No. I didn’t, did I?”

  Galen chuckled and said, “It’s hell when she knows where all your buttons are, isn’t it?”

  “Quit stirring up trouble,” Nell told her partner.

  “Who, me?”

  “You thrive on it. Look, why don’t we all sit down?”

  “Is your shoulder bothering you?” Max asked her.

  “Buttons, buttons everywhere,” Galen murmured.

  Nell sent him a threatening look and said to Max, “No, I’m fine. But since we’re all trying to finish up reports and statements today, there are probably some things we need to talk about.”

  “I wouldn’t say there were many questions left,” Galen said somewhat lazily.

  “A few loose ends,” Bishop said as he and his wife joined the others at the conference table.

  Justin, noting that Lauren Champagne’s formerly dark eyes were now an electric blue, said slowly, “Contact lenses.”

  She smiled at him. “It’s amazing how just a couple of simple things can make you look different. Brown contact lenses, a bottle tan, a slightly different accent. I’m Miranda, by the way.”

  “Why use a false name?” Max wondered.

  “It isn’t a false name, it just isn’t mine.” She shrugged. “Sometimes it’s quicker and easier to borrow the name and background of a real person—which is why we’ve built and maintain a list of cops and other useful people around the country who’re willing to give up their identities temporarily. The real Lauren Champagne is a cop who wanted to take a few months off from her job in Virginia and drive across the country.”

  “Every investigation we get involved in is different,” Bishop said. “In this case, we had Nell, who had a perfect cover because she had a legitimate reason for coming to Silence. But we needed someone inside the sheriff’s department as well, someone who could move among and observe the other cops, check the files and other paperwork, that sort of thing.”