Hostage

by Kay Hooper

  “Oh, so do I. But in the meantime, we probably should go and talk to Anna and Owen. Since we’ve been racing all around their property all afternoon and yelling at each other in their basement. They might be curious.”

  “You think?”

  “Sarcasm doesn’t suit you,” she told him severely.

  He followed her away from the table and out of the dining room, saying merely, “If you think you cornered the market on sarcasm, think again. By the way, what do you think of your new eyes?”

  She glanced back over her shoulder at him out of eyes that were still blue, but definitely changed. “I could get used to them, I think,” she said. “Sort of waiting to find out whether I get to keep the clarity of vision. I definitely like that.”

  DeMarco might have responded to that, but Thomas was before them suddenly, opening the doors to the Grand Parlor, expressionless and yet somehow conveying disapproval.

  Feeling a bit sheepish, Hollis led the way into the room and to the seating group nearest the door, where Owen made a halfhearted effort to rise from his comfortable chair. There was a silver tray on the table at the center of the grouping holding the remains of coffee and pastries, and on the other side of the table, Anna sat with her customary almost-rigid posture.

  Hollis took the third seat of the four, and as DeMarco took the last chair, she said to their host and hostess, “We’re really sorry about today. All the rushing around and . . . Well, we’re sorry. But I can tell you that it wasn’t exactly useless activity.”

  “Did you see Daniel?” Anna asked eagerly.

  “Well . . . no.” Hollis bit her bottom lip, then said, “We found a way to release the other spirits here.”

  “All of them?” Owen asked dryly.

  Hollis had expected more direct scorn, so her answer was less sharp than it might have been. “Look, I don’t expect you to believe me, but they were trapped here. A lot of souls, being prevented from going on to wherever they were supposed to go next. This was sort of a natural . . . The geography of this valley was—”

  She decided to give it up.

  “Never mind. Anna, I hope the reason I haven’t been able to contact Daniel before now was because it was like looking for a needle in a pile of needles. The others are gone now, as far as I can tell. So maybe I can contact Daniel. But I can’t promise success. Reese and I don’t want to trespass on your hospitality any longer, though, so we’ll drive back to town tomorrow. If you do want me to keep trying to contact Daniel, I’m willing. But we should stay in town.”

  “Vending machines,” DeMarco murmured. “No wireless Internet. Oddly low, lumpy beds.”

  Even Owen smiled. “Being the only motel in Devil’s Gap, the Horizon doesn’t have to try very hard.”

  “It doesn’t try at all.” Hollis cleared her throat. “We’ve been extremely comfortable here. Extremely. But I haven’t been able to deliver what you asked of me, Anna, and the Horizon will be fine until I do. It’s only fair. That—”

  She stared past Anna, watching a tall, distinguished-looking man walk around a giant potted palm and come to stand just behind Anna’s right shoulder. He was smiling.

  He was Daniel Alexander.

  “Or,” Hollis said, after a brief glance down at the gooseflesh on her arm, “maybe we’ll just go home tomorrow.”

  Anna looked frozen. “He . . . he’s here?”

  “Standing right behind you.” To the spirit, she said, “Where have you been? I think every spirit in the state was here, except for you.”

  Calmly, he said, “Miss Templeton, if you had contacted me immediately, you and your partner wouldn’t have remained here long enough to do what you needed to do.”

  “That’s why you stayed out of sight?”

  “It seemed best.”

  Anna looked over her shoulder, then desperately at Hollis. “He’s speaking to you?”

  “Sorry, sorry. Yes, he’s speaking.” Hollis sometimes forgot she was the only one in the room hearing and seeing what she was hearing and seeing. But then she glanced at DeMarco—and saw that his slightly widened eyes were fixed on the spirit.

  “You see him too,” she said slowly.

  “A fun new toy,” DeMarco said slowly. “My turn, I guess.”

  “About time.” Hollis looked back at Anna, shoving yet another thing aside to be dealt with later. “He said he stayed out of sight because he knew we were here to do something else. Freeing the other spirits.” There was really no reason to mention the vortex, she decided.

  “My brother didn’t believe in ghosts,” Owen said rather harshly.

  Still calm, Daniel offered a message, which Hollis relayed, trying not to laugh. “He said to tell you that when you’re up to your ass in alligators, it’s a little difficult to remember that your main objective was to drain the swamp.”

  Owen actually paled. “That—was on a poster in my bedroom when we were kids.”

  “So he said. And no offense, Owen, but Anna’s been waiting a long time to talk to Daniel, so . . .”

  He remained silent, his gaze scanning the area all around his sister-in-law’s chair.

  Anna whispered, “I need to know it’s him.”

  Hollis watched that distinguished face soften as he looked down at his widow, and she really, really wished Anna could see what she saw.

  Daniel said, “The message I promised to give her is simple. This is no trick, no deception, no con. I am the love of her life, as she is the love of mine. I am always with her, and I always will be. She carries me wherever she goes, not because of my wedding ring, but because I will never wish to be anywhere but at her side.”

  Hollis repeated the message carefully, sentence by sentence. And when she finished, she saw Anna relax for the first time. Saw a look of peace and contentment soften her face.

  The older woman hooked a finger inside the high neckline of her dress and pulled out a fine chain that was always hidden inside her clothing. Hanging on the chain was a man’s wide gold wedding band.

  “Thank you,” she said to Hollis.

  “My pleasure.” Hollis looked up at Daniel. “If I could give her the gift of seeing you, hearing your voice, I would.”

  “I know. But you gave her peace, Miss—Hollis. You gave her peace. Thank you for that.”

  “I’m glad I could help.”

  “Tell her I want her to enjoy her life. To travel, make new friends, whatever makes her happy. We’ll be together again when it’s time.”

  “I’ll tell her.”

  He bowed his head slightly, looked down at his widow with another of those loving smiles, then slowly faded away.

  “No light,” Hollis said to DeMarco. “You see now why I find all this a little bit confusing. Sometimes a light, sometimes not.”

  “I don’t think he’s going anywhere.” DeMarco looked at Anna with a slight smile. “He really is always with you. But he wants you to be happy and enjoy your life. Stop running around looking for psychics to tell you what you’ve always known.”

  “You’re tampering with the text,” Hollis muttered.

  DeMarco sent her a look but continued to smile at Anna. She returned the smile, then got to her feet, keeping the two men seated with a curiously elegant gesture.

  “I think I’ll go to my rooms and rest a bit before dinner. It’s been a . . . very eventful day. I’ll see you all later.”

  When the door closed behind her, Owen sighed rather heavily. “Well, at least now maybe she’ll be content. I can thank you for that, and with all sincerity.”

  Hollis eyed him. “You’re welcome. Still not convinced I really saw Jamie Bell?”

  His expression didn’t change. “I think . . . the message got through. And like my sister-in-law, I can at least know a kind of peace.”

  She shrugged. “Well, I’ll take that. I’m not out to convince the world I�
�m a genuine medium, Owen. And we have enjoyed your hospitality. Thank you.”

  “Don’t mention it.” He got to his feet, adding, “I think I’ll go make a few calls before dinner. See you then.”

  Hollis watched the door close behind him, and then said to DeMarco, “Isn’t it fun, being a medium?”

  With more expression on his face than was usual for him, he replied, “So far, not loving it. Unnerving.”

  “Yeah, well, just wait until—” She watched as Brooke suddenly appeared, and she almost laughed as, out of the corner of her eye, she saw her partner start in surprise.

  “Where have you been?” she demanded. “I thought you were going to help me learn about being a medium.”

  “I’ve been near all the time,” Brooke said, rather absently. “You were doing fine, you didn’t need my help.”

  “I might,” DeMarco muttered.

  Brooke looked at him, then at Hollis. “You’re going to enjoy this, aren’t you?”

  “Bet your ass.” Hollis saw DeMarco shift a bit and said to him, “Trust me, she may look like a kid, but she’s older than both of us.”

  “I really am,” Brooke said to him. Then she frowned and added, “I’m sorry. You’re remembering the Brooke I was. At the Church.”

  Hollis half closed her eyes. “Damn, I’d forgotten that. Sorry, Reese.”

  “Unnerving,” he said to her, eyeing Brooke. “I didn’t know her, really, just to see her. Still . . .”

  Brooke waved a hand, her gesture as curiously elegant as Anna’s had been. “Stop feeling guilty about that. And talking about me as if I weren’t here.”

  “Excuse me,” DeMarco murmured.

  Brisk now, Brooke said, “Because we have other things to talk about.”

  “Such as?” Hollis asked politely.

  “Well, two things. Bishop’s on his way. And then there’s the money.”

  “What money?”

  “The nearly ten million dollars that Owen Alexander has been hiding for Anna’s younger half brother. The half brother who hadn’t known she existed until he stumbled on the information while he was bored and researching his own past. So many people can’t resist using the Net to see what’s been printed or written about them. He uncovered more than he expected to find.”

  “Brooke,” Hollis began, not even sure what she was going to ask.

  “And discovered even more when he came here looking for her. And found Owen instead.”

  FIFTEEN

  Callie had drifted in and out for some time she couldn’t measure. Sometimes painful things were being done to her. Sometimes voices talked over her, one of them rather harsh and impatient. And sometimes there was just peace broken only by mechanical-sounding clicks and whirs and beeps.

  And an occasional soft whine that was familiar.

  She had no idea how long she’d been out of it, and she was a bit fuzzy on the events that had occurred before she had lost consciousness.

  I was shot. By an arrow. Because I was dumb, mostly. Luther . . . patched me up as best he could. And then . . . I was on the litter? Long way to . . . Jacoby’s cabin. I think. What then? Don’t remember.

  When she finally forced open her eyes, the first thing she realized was that Cesar was lying beside her on the bed. The hospital bed. He was mostly alongside her legs, which put his big head at just about her hip level.

  The whine she had recognized was him. Worried about her.

  She moved her hand, finding just enough energy to lift it and place it on the broad head of her anxious dog.

  “Hey, boy.”

  Scare me. Don’t.

  “Sorry.” She saw the IV taped to her hand and frowned a little, her gaze following the tubing up to a bag of clear liquid.

  “So you’re finally back with us. Don’t ever scare me like that again.”

  Callie turned her head and saw Luther sitting in a chair on the other side of the bed. His face was calm, but . . . haggard. Weary.

  Beyond him, to her surprise, she saw squeezed into a corner a long couch with a rather loud print fabric, and on it in a pile were Jacoby’s three dogs, sound asleep.

  She returned her gaze to Luther, brows lifting in a mute question.

  “They bend the rules in small-town clinics,” he told her. “Cesar wasn’t about to leave you, which nobody here decided to argue about, though he stopped himself outside the operating room and waited there patiently until they wheeled you out. And the other three decided the same, or followed his lead. Whichever. Point is, they’re allowed. Besides, there’s only one other patient here at the moment, recovering from an appendectomy, and she’s at the other end of the building. We moved that god-awful couch in from the waiting room so the dogs would have a place to nap. Rugs are frowned upon, apparently, as tripping hazards.”

  He paused, then said, “The docs here approved your work on me, just so you know. Other than a fresh bandage, I was good to go. Your wound was a bit trickier, because as it turned out, that arrow nicked an artery. That’s why you lost so much blood. But they were able to repair the tear and replace at least some of the blood you lost. You can probably walk out of here in a couple of days.”

  Callie absorbed that. Now that she was awake, she felt surprisingly well, so apparently the long sleep had done her good.

  “Here.” He was holding a glass with a straw in front of her. “Some water. Your throat is probably too dry to try talking.”

  She sipped the water, feeling her indeed dry and slightly sore throat relax. After that, she was able to ask the question uppermost in her mind, even if a bit huskily.

  “Jacoby?”

  “Dead.” Without going into details about that, Luther continued in a slightly wry voice. “While the docs were working on you, I talked to the sheriff. Despite what you said, it appears he’s enjoying the unusual excitement in his town, even with retirement looming. Said it was the most interesting his job had ever been, and he only wished he’d known what was happening sooner. Mind you, he doesn’t have to be up on the mountain with the feds and search teams who’ve been at it since dawn, and he did show the requisite sober regret for the girl even if she wasn’t a local, but—”

  “They found her?”

  “Yeah, a couple of hours ago. Just as you said, in a shallow grave, and . . . dismembered. Well, actually cut into smaller pieces. No local or even regional missing girl or woman matching the general description of her face, hair and eye color. They’re comparing that info to missing-person reports, female, all up and down the Blue Ridge and into adjoining states, but it’s a long list. In the meantime, they’ll run her fingerprints, try to match dental records or, failing that, DNA. I’m told it could take weeks, though the feds sent everything to their lab and say it should be quicker than that, at least if her prints or DNA are on file. In the meantime, there’s an army up on the mountain, some looking for more bodies nobody wants to find, and some looking for the stolen money everybody wants to find. And a few still processing the section of mine shaft Jacoby used for his torture chamber; it’s a couple hundred yards higher up from his cabin. I got a description from one of the feds, and that’s all I want. Don’t need to see the place.

  “It’s late morning on Saturday, if you’re wondering. We got here last night, almost entirely thanks to Cesar. He ran in front of the truck, showing me the way through that insane tangle of old mining and logging roads. Without his help, we’d still be up there on the mountain. And you’d likely be dead. The docs here told me if we’d gotten to the clinic even an hour later, you likely wouldn’t have made it.”

  Callie absorbed all that, her hand resting on Cesar’s head, fingers absently pulling gently on his silky ears.

  Thanks, pal.

  Happy.

  Luther cocked his head, looking back and forth from her to her dog. “You two really do communicate. Telepathically?”

&nb
sp; “Something like that. Picking up on it?”

  “I think so.” He was cautious. “I’m still getting used to this stuff, but there’ve been a few times since yesterday I caught what seemed to be a word or two, and it didn’t seem . . . like a person.”

  “No, his thoughts are different. Partly emotional. Sometimes concepts more than words. With other dogs, like Jacoby’s three, it’s almost entirely emotion, and really unfocused. They haven’t worked with a telepath the way Cesar’s worked with me his whole life. He’s learned to use words to express his thoughts and emotions. They don’t know how to do that. At least, not yet.”

  “Planning on working with them, are you?”

  “Maybe. Probably. Though I’m not sure about the details. I travel a lot. Cesar travels with me, but four dogs traveling with me would probably be a bit much.”

  “Well, I had a feeling you’d want to find them a safe home. I called Maggie at Haven. There are already several dogs, at the main house and throughout the compound. Most are pets of operatives or employees; some belong to Maggie and John. Big place, kind people, lots of acreage on which to safely run if that’s what they like. Maggie said they’re welcome.”

  He paused, then added, “And you’d be welcome to visit them as often as you like. Work with them yourself, or teach one or two Haven operatives how to do it.”

  “Like you?”

  Luther met her gaze, his own a little amused and something else. “Haven has plenty of telepaths, and so does the SCU. But telepaths who can communicate with animals . . . Let’s just say that opens up interesting possibilities. After witnessing firsthand the sort of things Cesar can do, the kind of help he can offer in dangerous situations—because guiding me off the mountain was his idea, not mine—I’m fairly anxious to learn more about those interesting possibilities.”

  Callie nodded slowly, thoughtfully. “I imagine Bishop would give me time to spend at Haven so we could explore those possibilities. I mean, bound to be helpful to have more investigative tools for the toolbox.”

  “That was my thinking.”

  “I imagine we can work something out.”