by Kay Hooper
She’d be lost forever, unable to ever find her way out of the dark to get back home.
—
JONAH WALKED INTO their makeshift command center just in time to land in the middle of a conversation.
“I don’t see how he’d be able to get his hands on enough drugs to keep them all sedated this long,” Robbie was saying. “All the doctors and nurses in Serenity checked out. The pharmacies and drug stores checked out. Hell, even the veterinarians did.”
“Okay, then, where do you hide six people who’re either tied up and gagged or else making a hell of racket? Could be a basement or cellar,” Dante offered.
Sarah pondered, looking at Jonah almost absently, then said, “There aren’t many downtown, even under industrial buildings. We aren’t close to the New Madrid fault line, but this town was built after some pretty rough earthquakes hit the state a couple hundred years ago, the kind that rip apart structures and create brand-new lakes.” She shook her head. “Bad storms, being underground is a good idea. Earthquakes, not so much. The underground structures I know of hold necessary equipment for the buildings. Furnaces, pipelines for water and gas, junction boxes for electricity. Like that.”
“What are we talking about?” Jonah asked.
It was Robbie, pacing restlessly back and forth at the opposite end of the table, who answered. “We were trying to come up with possible holding places for six people in the general area of downtown. Can you think of a place in town where you could do that and be absolutely sure no one would discover your hiding place, even with the whole town being searched?”
“No,” Jonah replied immediately. He sat down at the table in the chair closest to the door, adding, “Sully took his dogs all over town, did a grid search. That was after Sean Messina disappeared. We checked every building, residential and commercial, from the roof to the foundation.”
“Shit,” Robbie said.
Sarah frowned at Jonah. “Why didn’t you bring us coffee?”
He lifted his own cup in a small salute. “Because you three are about to be relieved; I talked to Luke a little while ago, and he and Samantha will be here shortly. The last thing you need right now is more caffeine. You need sleep, all of you.”
“Did you get any?” Sarah demanded.
“I did. I’ll admit it wasn’t the best sleep I’ve had, but probably the best I could expect under the circumstances.”
“How about Luke and Sam?” Dante asked.
“Luke said Sam always sleeps like the dead after using her abilities that . . . powerfully. Or words to that effect. And he said he slept as well. They had a late breakfast at the hotel. Clyde’s a better cook, but the hotel kitchen is pretty good. Just so you know.”
“We’re full anyway,” Robbie told him. “Pancakes for me. Wow.”
Dante said, “And I want to hear him sing to his hens. Because those seemingly plain scrambled eggs tasted like manna. Really. Food for the gods.”
Jonah shook his head slightly. “Okay, now I know you all need sleep. Hours of it.”
“That did sound weird, didn’t it?” Dante frowned.
“Will it do me any good to ask if you found anything in the files so far?”
Seriously, Robbie said, “We didn’t find anything that raised a red flag. And no solid connections between the six missings. I mean, citizens of the same town, and there was some overlap here and there. Two go to the same church. Two others the same school. Three have the same dentist. Three used the same real estate agent to find their apartments or condos. All the adults use the same bank. Small towns are just—not good for victimology.”
Sarah pushed a legal pad toward him. “I wrote down some stuff. Us speculating, mostly. A few questions we had. Whatever we really felt was useful or potentially useful is up on the evidence boards, which isn’t a lot, mostly just the facts we all knew anyway.” She looked at the file box in the chair beside hers, and added, “Sam needs to go through Annie’s files and notes. If she had some kind of realization that could help us catch this guy, I couldn’t find it in that box. Maybe I just didn’t know what to look for.”
“Okay. Look, you guys go ahead and take off. Sarah, don’t go home alone.”
“Tim’s waiting at the station. He’s supposed to work first shift today, but we didn’t think you’d mind.”
“I don’t. You should all know that, in case you haven’t already felt or sensed it, the whole town is beyond tense. Miles beyond tense. They had more hope before. Annie’s murder made them face the possibility that all the missings could be dead. Just because we haven’t found any bodies doesn’t mean they’re still alive.”
“And if they are still alive,” Sarah said, “we can’t figure out how he’s doing it. It’s more than three weeks since the teenagers disappeared; if they’re still alive, he must be feeding them, somehow taking care of them, even minimally. One of our questions was the possibility of nutrition through an IV, but that means medical training of some kind, never mind the supplies needed.”
“You can get anything online,” Dante said. “If you know where to look and what to ask for, you don’t have to be a doc, a nurse, or have any medical training at all.”
“Yeah, so we should probably be checking with all the delivery drivers who may or may not have noticed an unusual amount of deliveries. On the other hand, if he’s been planning this, then I’m guessing whatever he needed, he got a little along, ahead of the abductions, so as not to arouse suspicion.”
“Which is where we keep getting stuck,” Robbie said. “If they’re still alive, and if he’s taking care of them—why? What the hell is the point of it all?”
Jonah was about to respond, then shook his head at her. “Enough for now, at least for you guys. You three go get some sleep. I don’t know how much I’ll be able to help Luke and Sam with the psychic stuff, but I know how to be a cop, so I’ll do that.”
Sarah opened her mouth to say something about not leaving even Jonah alone, but then she realized. “Dammit, you’ve been bopping all over the place alone, all the while telling the rest of us not to be.”
“I don’t know about bopping,” Jonah said gravely. “But I’m not really worried about this guy coming after me.”
Lucas and Samantha came in just in time to hear that, and Luke said, “Jonah’s probably right that he wouldn’t be a target for this unsub. However he views us, it’s likely he sees Jonah as the one he’s trying to outsmart. And odds are, he won’t come after him, at least not directly.”
“Outsmart or just drive nuts,” Jonah said. He noticed that Sarah was frowning, and gave her a questioning look, to which she replied, “I dunno. Something somebody just said in the last few minutes set off a bell, but I’m too tired to figure out what it was.” She shook her head. “Anyway, Jonah, be careful.”
“I will. You guys be careful as well.”
Lucas frowned slightly, then said to the others, “Okay, our shift. You guys go get some rest. If we catch a break with the case, we’ll call. Otherwise, plan to be back here around midnight.”
It was Thursday, not long before noon.
FOURTEEN
There was still no sense of time passing for Nessa. It might only have been a few hours, or a few days—or even longer than that—before she thought the black snake, that he was not here, at least for now. Not here. Not now. And he had not found her for all his searching, she was sure of that. Not yet.
But underneath the smooth, placid surface of her mind, where she hid from the dark snake, a clock was ticking away the minutes she had to try to escape, the minutes before he would surely come back, and she eventually realized that she did have a growing sense of her surroundings.
She kept telling herself that if she could only figure out where she was, or at least which way to go in order to escape, then when the time was right, she could get away. Run.
Go home.
&
nbsp; She thought about the others she knew were around her, their breathing soft and even, and a part of her felt horrible that she was even thinking about escaping this prison without them. But a part of her knew that if she could escape, if she could only get away, then she could go for help. She could tell her parents and Chief Riggs where these other people were. And then they could be rescued.
Even her common sense told her that one little girl couldn’t help at least five other people, mostly grown-ups, to get away. All the time she’d been awake and aware, even hiding herself away beneath the surface of her mind, she knew none of the others had stirred.
At all.
That was scary. It was like they were alive enough to breathe, but not alive enough to . . . to really be alive.
Gathering her courage, Nessa opened her eyes and turned her head, trying her best to see something, anything, in the thick darkness around her. But she couldn’t. No window, no door, not even the sliver of light somewhere.
She also flexed her feet—she was barefoot, just as she had been when she’d gone downstairs at home to get a drink. Whenever that was. However long ago it had been. Beneath her feet just felt . . . cold and rough, uneven. Maybe ground without any grass. Or maybe something else. She didn’t know.
It wasn’t until she was slowly and carefully moving her fingers, and then her wrists, and then her arms that she realized there was tape on one arm, and tubing—and a needle stuck in her.
Nessa had been in the hospital once when she’d been thrown from a horse and badly injured. She could remember lying there mostly covered in bandages, but she also remembered getting the blood transfusion that had, the doctors told her, saved her life. She’d been extraordinarily lucky because her blood was rare and it had to be just the right donor.
She remembered that needle in her arm, and also the one in her other arm that had kept her arm from hurting too much.
She didn’t think this was that kind of needle. Or the kind that gave blood necessary to live.
When she felt around, she realized that the tubing was taped to her arm and then swung loosely upward, until it connected to a plastic bag attached to a thin metal pole.
Just like hospitals used.
She sat there for a while and thought about that, until another sudden thought, a dawning realization, made her consider what she was sitting on.
It was a chair, but not a normal chair. It had . . . it was . . . someone had changed it. Someone had turned it . . . into a potty chair.
As bad as everything else was, that embarrassed Nessa horribly. Someone had pulled her pajama bottoms down around her ankles, she could feel that now. Someone had pulled down her pajamas and sat her on a potty chair.
And he had done the same things to the others, she was sure of that. Because those were the smells she hadn’t really wanted to identify all this time. It was people, as helpless as she was, more helpless than she was, going to the bathroom in a pot or bowl beneath a chair like the one she was sitting on.
For some reason, that was the final catalyst Nessa needed. She moved slowly, as quietly as she could, and carefully removed the needle from her arm, pressing a fold of her pajama top against the place that bled when the needle was removed.
Then she sat there for a long time afterward, keeping the surface of her mind quiet, but underneath thinking so fast she could hardly keep up with herself. She shifted around a bit, silently, and then pushed herself to her feet, holding on to the chair a few moments until the dizziness passed. When she was as steady on her feet as she thought she was likely to be, she fumbled for her pajama bottoms and panties and slowly pulled them up.
Then came the scary part. The really scary part. Because she had to find her way out of here. She had to find her way in total darkness, by feel—and she knew only too well that she was bound to feel those other people breathing, to encounter them in the dark.
There was nothing she could do for them except escape and lead rescuers back here to save them.
But for now, she had to move very, very slowly, hands outstretched. She dared not bump into anyone—or anything—with any kind of force. Like those tall, delicate poles holding the IV bags. One of those, if tipped over, would fall with a crash, Nessa knew.
And all it would take to summon her captor was a sound.
Just a sound.
So Nessa held her hands out in the dark, dark place that held smells she could no longer bear, braced herself to touch whatever or whoever she touched without making a sound, and began to slowly, slowly make her way forward.
—
LUKE AND SAMANTHA were filled in on what the others had found, which was little enough, and what they had speculated, as per the notes Sarah had very neatly written.
Jonah pushed the pad across the table to them, then sipped his coffee and stared at the rather sparse evidence boards.
A picture of each of the victims. An unidentifiable shadow outline of the unsub. Beneath the picture of each victim was a list of their particular info: DOB, height, weight, hair and eye color, clothing when last seen. And below that, the scarce info of when and from where they had been taken, times approximate except for Luna Lang and Nessa, both of whom had appeared on time-stamped video.
“You’re frowning,” Luke said, sipping his own coffee. “Something bothering you?”
“Yeah . . . but I’m not sure what it is.”
“That seems to be going around,” Sam muttered.
“Go with it,” Luke told the chief. “Speak out loud. Stream of consciousness. Sometimes that’s where we find the things hiding from our conscious minds.”
Jonah was a little startled. “Hiding?”
Lucas hesitated, exchanged a glance with his silent wife, then said, “This is your town, Jonah. Your town. More than any other small town I’ve ever been in, the center of this place is you. Until this happened, there was no crime to speak of. You tended to stop trouble before it started, stepping in before things could get too tense. You talked, and the people of Serenity listened.”
“I’m chief of police, of course they listened,” Jonah said, more than a little uncomfortable.
“In most towns, that would be the reason. But not here.”
“Why not here?” Jonah asked warily.
Samantha spoke up, asking simply, “Were you aware you’re a latent psychic?”
“What? No. Me?”
Luke smiled faintly. “It’s not a fully functional ability, at least for now, but you’re definitely a latent. If I had to guess, probably an empath.”
Jonah had no idea what to do with that.
“You don’t sleep well, do you? I mean, you toss and turn even on a peaceful night when nothing disturbing has happened in your town. Even when you’re tired. Even when you need to sleep.”
“I’ve always been a restless sleeper,” Jonah muttered.
“But it got worse once you became chief of police, didn’t it?”
“Well . . . there was more to worry about once I did.”
Samantha said, “Don’t let it throw you, please. Right now, your latent ability is an asset. You deal well with other people, which is part of your job. You’re able to quickly judge the mood if the odd bit of trouble is getting started, and you know who to talk to and what to say to let the tensions ease.”
“I’m a trained cop, it is a part of my job.”
“Like the hunches you get that make you show up at a certain place at a certain time, just as trouble is about to start?”
Jonah frowned at her.
Luke let out a little laugh, rare for him. “Don’t be so worried about it. Latent means it isn’t a major part of your life. Right now it’s hunches and déjà vu and knowing how to talk to people. Chances are, that’s the way it’ll be for the rest of your life.”
“But?” Jonah asked with foreboding.
“But . . . cas
es like this one, with a powerful psychic playing games and using people as his pawns have a way of . . . ending badly.”
“You mean my missing people could all be dead?”
“That’s always been a possibility and you know it. But the point is, he took them. Your people are in his hands, stolen away by him, and that’s something that demands you use every bit of training and instinct you have in order to see them safe. Your latent abilities could be triggered, go active, for that reason alone.”
“Great,” Jonah said, hearing the uneasiness in his own voice.
Samantha said, “Our abilities tend to be triggered by trauma, remember? Depending on how you deal with this situation and whatever the outcome is, you could find yourself a functioning psychic when all is said and done.”
“But that isn’t definite,” Jonah said hopefully.
Luke shook his head. “No, not definite. Possible, though. Because even if they’re all alive, they’re in the hands of a monster. A monster you’ll probably have to face eventually. Sooner rather than later.”
“Yeah. So?”
“He has an enormous amount of negative energy, Jonah. So far as we know, he’s only used it to abduct six people and find a way into the mind and memories of Robbie. He probably tried with Sam, but she has good defenses, and he didn’t get in.”
Jonah looked at her. “Sure of that?”
“Reasonably. There aren’t really any absolutes in all this, but I tend to go out with no warning either because I’ve used my abilities longer than I should have—or I’m under some kind of psychic attack.”
“My life used to be so normal,” Jonah muttered.
“Kiss that good-bye,” Sam told him.
“She’s being dramatic,” Luke told him.
“Oh, yeah? Want to tell him about the time I was buried alive?”
“Not really,” her husband told her. “Besides, that bastard was out to punish me. Me, deliberately. With very few exceptions, that isn’t the kind of case we deal with.”
