Hostage

by Kay Hooper

  “Definitely.”

  “I didn’t feel anything. When I was there.”

  “Didn’t you?” Her gaze was steady.

  Luther thought back, then sighed. “I don’t know, maybe I did. It’s hard to say because that sort of thing isn’t normal for me. I tend not to pick up energy of any kind unless I’m touching something and concentrating. The only thing I touched near Jacoby were a few trees.” He glanced down at his leg. “And . . . a bullet.”

  “Which he touched when he loaded his gun.” Callie shook her head slightly. “I didn’t feel anything unusual when I dug it out of you. But we both know any energy it might have held could have been discharged earlier.”

  “Into me?”

  “I suppose it’s possible. But I’m no expert when it comes to the . . . transference of energy. Not really my job to figure out the why of all this. From what I’m told, the SCU and Haven operatives are adding a hell of a lot of empirical data to scientific understanding of just how energy works. Still a lot more questions than answers, though.”

  Luther frowned, considered a few unsettling possible consequences to himself, then dismissed it as something to deal with later, if and when he had to. “This energy you say is around Jacoby. Is it created by him?”

  “Not sure yet whether he’s the source; I didn’t get the chance to explore the area around that cabin before he got here, and so far I haven’t caught him venturing very far away.”

  “So it could be coming from the area rather than from him.” Luther was very carefully not thinking about any change in his own abilities. Not yet. He suspected his mind wasn’t quite ready to deal with that just yet.

  “Some places store energy,” Callie agreed. “Some are even sources of energy; we’ve figured out that much. Energy the earth itself generates and the topography of a place holds on to. And these are old mountains with a lot of violent history soaked into the very ground and held there in some places. Maybe the area around Jacoby’s cabin is one of those places. Maybe choosing that particular cabin was no accident or coincidence; maybe he knew what was there. Or maybe it’s . . . just him.”

  Somewhat belatedly, Luther said, “I’m surprised Maggie didn’t tell me there was an SCU agent here. Or didn’t she know?”

  “I have no idea whether she knew. All I know is that I’m here because Bishop had a hunch. And before you jump on that one, I’m guessing we both know his hunches are never just that. Whatever he believes is going to happen, he didn’t share with me.”

  “You’re here alone?”

  “Except for Cesar.”

  “I thought Bishop always sent people out in teams.”

  “Almost always. There are some teams with multiple agents. A few agents work solo more often than not. And a few work only with a single partner. Far as I know, I’m the only one on the team with a canine partner.” She nodded toward the watchful Rottweiler.

  “He’s your partner?”

  “Yep. Trained and certified as a law enforcement dog. I raised and trained him, going through several different programs in which we both received specialized training. And then I got him . . . Bishop-approved.”

  Luther was surprised, but when he considered, it did seem quite reasonable for Bishop to accept a trained dog to aid one of his agents. From what little was really known, outside the SCU, of the unit chief, he was all about giving his people whatever tools they could use to investigate crimes. And the FBI certainly employed K-9 units for a variety of purposes.

  “You might have told me some of this sooner.”

  Her eyebrows lifted in faint surprise. “I was trained by Bishop. Never volunteer information unless and until you have no other choice or else deem it necessary. Until you asked, I really didn’t see any reason to explain why I was here.”

  “How long have you been here?” Luther asked, deciding not to waste a glare.

  “Couple weeks, like I said.”

  Luther swore under his breath. “Then what the hell am I doing here?”

  “I gather the FBI agent in the nearest field office requested help from Haven in locating his fugitive. Since the fugitive escaped from FBI agents while in their custody, this is one of those cases where it’s the FBI rather than the U.S. Marshals Service who’s responsible for tracking and recapturing this guy.”

  “And the FBI field agent doesn’t know you’re here?”

  “No. And my cover is solid. Anybody checking the records would find that this land and cabin belong to the Davis family, this branch of which I’m connected to through a couple of marriages and a few cousins.”

  “For real?”

  “On paper. The current owner of this place doesn’t usually come up here this time of year and was happy instead to take a nice vacation out to Vegas, cash bonus in hand. He was also happy to mention his trip and my occupancy here before he left to a few friends down in town.”

  “Devil’s Gap?” When she nodded, he said almost as an aside, “I wonder whose bright idea that name was?”

  “Maybe a translation of an old Native American name. There are a lot of them in these mountains, especially in areas like this with a lot more wilderness than civilization.” She paused, then added wryly, “Anyway, it’s the sort of town where everybody pretty much knows everybody else’s business, even if they keep it among the natives. So my bona fides are established.”

  * * *

  COLE WASN’T ENTIRELY sure he was awake. He was walking through the forest, dawn still a distant coming, and he was looking for something. But . . . he wasn’t sure what he was looking for.

  There were no voices in his head, and that was good, that was so good he practically sat down and cried with relief. But instead he kept walking, looking around as best he could in the moonlight.

  When he thought about it, he realized that he wasn’t even sure where he was. He didn’t feel lost, only . . . displaced. And driven. Driven to find whatever it was he needed to find.

  There was a little ravine, he thought, and a tree on its banks with roots exposed from many spring rains. That was where she was.

  She?

  A niggling unease stirred in his mind, but it was pushed down relentlessly, this time not by voices but by something else inside him he was briefly aware was darker and more powerful.

  And . . . needful.

  After that, he stopped worrying about it and just kept walking, briskly, climbing up to where he’d hidden her safely away.

  Because it was time.

  * * *

  “BISHOP IS THOROUGH, I’ll give him that much. And probably easier to be prepared for things when you see some of them coming.” Luther shook his head, but added, “We both know what my orders were. What about yours? I gather capture of the fugitive isn’t necessarily Bishop’s primary goal.”

  It wasn’t a question.

  Callie smiled wryly. “My assignment is to try to figure out how Jacoby managed to escape two experienced federal agents without any apparent outside help, without being armed, and leaving them with no memory of what happened.”

  “Figure out psychically, I gather?”

  “Yeah. One of my things is picking up on and sometimes being able to interpret negative energy.”

  “That’s what Bishop figured Jacoby used?”

  “As it was explained to me, it would take negative energy to . . . steal time . . . from someone. By definition, taking away is a negative action. The agents lost time, or the memories of time. Whichever it was, they haven’t gotten it back yet. Not such a good sign, that.”

  The realization that his own newly created abilities as a telepath—assuming Callie was right about that—might have come from negative energy made Luther’s skin crawl more than a bit.

  “Right now, you’re a neutral telepath,” Callie said calmly. “I’m not picking up on anything either positive or negative coming from you. Not so unusual wi
th abilities that go active suddenly or unexpectedly. They tend to just sort of sit there for a bit, letting us adjust. Usually. The thing is, you need to keep your distance from any kind of negative energy, at least until you’ve learned to shield this new ability.”

  “I have a shield,” he said slowly. “Usually, I mean. It’s how I . . . blend in when I’m tracking someone. How I’m not seen. That’s my thing.”

  “I know. But that shield . . .” For the first time, she seemed to be struggling to convey something, but whether it was because she didn’t have the knowledge or lacked the ability to express it was something Luther couldn’t begin to guess.

  “What about it?”

  She was frowning. “It’s . . . cracked. For want of a better word. I wasn’t around you before you came here, but I can’t believe that what I sense is normal for you. Not if it’s always hidden you the way you describe, the way I was told your abilities work. So something must have happened. To you. To it. And I doubt it was being shot.”

  “I’ve been shot before,” he said. “Nothing changed that time, not psychically.”

  “Okay. Then we should probably assume the damage to your shield has something to do with the energy around Jacoby’s place. Which makes it especially vital that you keep your distance now. Aside from the cracked shield, new abilities tend to be affected by external energy a lot faster and more . . . drastically . . . than established ones.”

  “Affected how?”

  “You probably know as much as I do.”

  “I sort of doubt it. Affected how?”

  She studied him for a moment, then gave a faint shrug. “Thing is, I can’t tell for certain how strong a telepath you are. I mean, my abilities don’t work that way. I know you can send and receive, apparently complete thoughts—sentences—and I know that’s unusual. It speaks to the strength of your abilities, especially since telepathy is a new one, but still doesn’t tell me just how powerful you are.”

  “And that’s important because?”

  “The more powerful you are, the more at risk you are right now, as a new psychic, of being affected by external energy sources. Especially with that cracked shield.”

  Luther stared at her for a long moment, then repeated steadily, “Affected how?”

  “That depends on the energy. How strong it is. What the source is. What’s generating the energy and why. Whether that cracked shield offers you enough protection or even any at all. If you can’t protect yourself at all . . . Well, energy can do all kinds of things. Psychic energy, we both know, can do amazing things, positive as well as negative. Since this is negative energy, it could have a negative effect on you. Physically. Psychically. Even emotionally. At best, it could attack you in a sense, be a drain on your own energy.”

  “And at worst?”

  “I don’t know the worst. To my knowledge, this particular situation has never happened to an SCU agent or Haven operative.”

  “I don’t much like the sound of that,” he said slowly.

  “No, I imagine not. In fact, I imagine it wouldn’t be a good thing for any of us. Especially not here and now. Whatever Jacoby can or can’t do, the energy all around him is dark, and though I haven’t gotten close enough to be sure, I have a strong hunch it’s controlling him rather than the other way around.”

  “Energy can do that?” It was something he’d never heard of.

  “It can if he can’t protect himself, or deliberately opened himself to it. If it’s coming from a powerful source with an agenda—so to speak. A disembodied spirit who doesn’t like being disembodied or is just plain angry or evil, for instance. An energy that wants, needs, control. An energy that wants to escape whatever’s been holding it, containing it, here.”

  “Wants? Needs? That implies a consciousness. In fact, it damned well demands one.”

  “I’d agree with that.”

  “How can energy have a consciousness?”

  “Like I said, it could be coming from a disembodied spirit or spirits. Jacoby himself could be a psychic whose abilities became active due to some event we have no way of knowing, or due to the sudden onset of mental illness of one kind or another; psychiatric patients are usually at the mercy of their illnesses, and that is one of the psychic triggers we’ve recently identified.”

  “One of the scarier ones,” Luther noted dryly.

  “Yeah, most of us feel a little too out of control a little too often as it is. The threat of maybe going crazy isn’t exactly reassuring. One reason I’m glad I was born with my abilities and have never had a new one triggered.”

  Luther was wishing he could say the same on both counts.

  “Anyway, the dark energy could come from Jacoby for whatever reason. Or it could be the place, the area around that cabin or the cabin itself that’s somehow soaked up the negative energy of something horrific: a battle, maybe a murder or murders. Energy that’s been trapped there a long time, growing darker and darker because it’s been trapped there. Energy that is, in a sense, holding him hostage. Possible. Possible he’s trying to deal with something he’s never before had to deal with. Maybe gaining control. Or not. As I said, I know he hasn’t strayed very far from the place since he got here. Not far at all, in fact.”

  She frowned. “I don’t know how he was able to escape the agents, but all through that part of the story his actions were careful, methodical, planned, precise. Organized. And unhurried. He didn’t try to run right away, he took the time—and the risk—of staying in the same area long enough to get his dogs. Maybe long enough for something else we haven’t yet discovered. He had the cabin rented and waiting, probably the Jeep hidden somewhere waiting for him, maybe the other vehicles as well, and all of them turned out to be untraceable. He had supplies stashed, or got them somewhere along the way where no one recognized him and no security camera we know of recorded it.”

  “And I guess both likely and unlikely stores were checked.”

  “By some very good technical analysts, yes. Between traffic cams and cameras at ATMs and security cams at a lot of businesses, and especially given the relatively small area, there was a good chance of catching him on security footage somewhere. At least, that was the logical thought. But he wasn’t spotted anywhere on camera. No sign of him shopping. Or getting gas, for that matter. No recordings of him at all. Just a witness here or there who’d never have noticed him except that his picture was all over TV and the Internet.” She smiled faintly. “Never mind the BOLO. Today it’s TV and the Internet that brings more witnesses forward. And he hasn’t shown up on any cell-phone-captured videos on YouTube yet. We have people monitoring that too.”

  She drew a breath and let it out slowly, thoughtful. “He was headed this way all along, and both before and during the trip was sharp enough and careful enough to lay false trails miles away from his destination. He had a plan for his escape and it was a good one. He picked a place to hide, and it was a good one—at least on paper. It really wasn’t until he got up here that his behavior became very obviously erratic.”

  “Which makes it at least possible he wasn’t nearly so dangerous until he arrived here and became affected by something in the area. Something in that cabin or in the area around it.” Luther thought about it. “But you said taking away the memories of those agents was a negative thing, something he did before he got here. The first step he took in escaping.”

  “The first step that we know of.”

  * * *

  COLE JACOBY WAS in a very dark place. He felt an enormous pressure, as if something with incredible strength and will had backed him into a corner or put him inside a box or wrapped him tightly in something, and was holding him still.

  He couldn’t see.

  Couldn’t move.

  Couldn’t hear even his own breathing, or feel his heart beating, or sense anything in the darkness except that, except the impenetrable blackness of nothing.
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  Was he dead?

  No. No, because . . . because he could smell something. Something rusty. Something metallic. Something very, very old that made him afraid in a way he could never remember being afraid. And something that smelled a lot like . . . Well, it had to be sulfur. Had to be. Even rotten eggs didn’t have the bite, the sharp, eye-watering sting, of true sulfur.

  There was nothing else like that. Except . . . maybe . . . brimstone.

  Even as that realization surfaced, he decided to ignore it. He was just . . . sleeping, that was all. Caught in some kind of weird nightmare. That had to be it, because it couldn’t be real.

  Could it?

  No. A nightmare. It explained why he couldn’t move. Why he couldn’t see. Or speak. Or feel anything except blackness and terror.

  And nightmares were unpredictable, he knew that. It explained why he could smell when he couldn’t use any other sense. And then . . . it explained why he could suddenly hear with a painful clarity.

  It just didn’t explain what he heard.

  It didn’t explain the screaming.

  * * *

  LUTHER NODDED. “TRUE, attempting to control the guards may just have been the next step for him. Maybe because he’d already tried whatever his psychic sense is and realized he could only influence one or two minds at most. Or couldn’t control them long enough for his purposes. So he had to figure out a way to get out of prison, even temporarily. His actual first step may have been to offer the feds just enough information, or the promise of it, to persuade them to transfer him. He either took the chance or was reasonably sure he could exercise some kind of control over the two agents. Maybe they were all he could handle.”

  “Makes sense,” Callie agreed.

  “He had to have practiced in prison. We may know little about psychic mind control, but common sense says nobody learns how to successfully control the minds of two other people the first time they try, and he was in there for weeks waiting for his trial, and months after his conviction. He must have taken every chance to practice when he was relatively alone with someone else. His cellmate. Maybe a guard or two. Even his legal counsel. Especially his legal counsel.”