by Amie Gibbons
“I’ll check it out. Thanks.” I looked around. “So what are you doin’ here?”
“Making sure the Truck transfer went through smoothly.”
I looked at Director Foster. She called him? To what? See Truck was actually here? Maybe she was angling to get his help.
She’s nearly six feet tall, of some indeterminate middle of life age, and always in pantsuits, a pink one today.
And she’s, to use Grant’s words, a useless, bureaucrat bitch.
She smiled at me and I grinned back.
Nothing to see here, just an innocent little psychic.
She nodded to Charleston. “Shall we, Senator?”
“Actually, I’d like to have a word with Agent Ryder. I’ll be there in a minute.”
Her eyes went hard, showing the shark underneath for just a second. Ooooo, the director was dismissed and she knew it.
I just kept smiling as she walked away. She’d be back. The second I knew where the bodies were buried (strange how that’s normally just an expression, huh?) she’d want to be right there to take the credit.
She was runnin’ for Congress, so she needed a big, flashy win that didn’t have anything to do with the supernatural.
“We all know why she wanted the case transferred here, Ariana,” Charleston said.
Geez, was he psychic now, too?
Or was I just that obvious?
“May I call you Ariana?” he asked.
“Sure.” I nodded.
“She wants this feather in her cap to help her win in November. I’m here because I don’t give a fig about that. Personally, I don’t want that woman with any more power than she already has. But, we need you to get what you can. Even if the case up in New York is completely unconnected, there’s a lot of families this will help.”
“I understand, sir.”
“And figuring out how he does it, well, that’s pretty important too.”
Why did I have the feelin’ there was something he wasn’t telling us?
He nodded once and turned.
“Um, Senator?” I said. He paused and turned around. “Why don’t you like Director Foster?”
“It’s not that I don’t like her. I don’t trust her. She wants it too badly.”
Yeah, yeah, I got that.
“Never trust someone who wants power,” he said. “Your daddy, he doesn’t want power. He feels it’s his duty to the people and he’s offering himself up as a sacrifice.”
I giggled. “Daddy did phrase it that way.”
“Yeah. The director? She wants the power.”
“What about you, sir?”
He raised his eyebrows.
“Do you want the power?”
He smiled. “It’s been a pleasure, Ariana. I’m sure we’ll meet again soon.”
He walked away.
“I hate politicians,” Grant said after the senator turned the corner. “That man’s hiding something.”
“That why you didn’t say anything, sir?” I asked.
“No. You’d be shocked how much people say when you let them.”
“Well, I certainly would be.”
He smiled back his little ghost smile, the one that barely tugs up the corners of his mouth and lights his eyes.
“It’s okay, your incessant jabber is part of your charm,” he said. “But, when you’re in there, keep your mouth shut.”
“Yes, sir. So I just touch him while you question him?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re not gonna mention we think it’s possible he had a partner?”
“No.”
“Why?”
He met my eyes.
“I mean, he can’t do anything if he knows, so why?”
“If he knows what we’re looking for, he’ll know to conceal it. If we keep questions focused on where the bodies are, he may let something slip.”
“But if I can see something if we get him focusin’ on-”
“You can get things either way by you focusing,” he said with a note of finality.
Oooooookay.
“Let me do the talking,” Grant said. “Tap him to get visions. Do not respond to anything he says. He likes to get under people’s skin. He’ll mess with you if you let him.”
“What do I do when I get a vision and start crying and he wants to know why?”
“Don’t answer him. Let him wonder.”
“Yes, sir.”
I followed him into the first interrogation room, set my purse down and pulled out the sticks of incense I keep in there.
Smell helps amp my visions, so does alcohol, but we weren’t allowed that on the job, otherwise I’d be chugging an apple martini. Sandalwood seems to work the best to up the psychic juices so I always keep the incense on me.
“I wonder what he’ll think of all this,” I said as I put the sticks in their wooden bowl and lit them.
“Doesn’t matter,” Grant said.
“What about his lawyer?”
“He agreed to waive council.”
“What? Why?”
“The director said a young woman wanted to interview him.” Grant got his lemon look, the one that said he was fixin’ to rip off a head or two. “He liked the idea.”
“But you’ll be doing the interviewing?”
“Yes. I know this is hard for you, but pretend you have laryngitis.” He gave me his ghost smile.
I mimicked zipping my lips shut.
Grant stood behind me, resting his large hands on my shoulders. “If you can’t handle it, or he gets to you, or anything, we’ll leave. Don’t hesitate to call it quits.”
“Are you saying that cuz now you know I won’t call it quits, General?”
“No. I’m saying it because I know you won’t want to call it quits if you think it will disappoint me. I’m telling you right now, it won’t.” His face hardened. “Is that understood, Ryder?”
I met his eyes in the mirror.
The icy green depths drew me in, settling calm down to my bones.
No clue if it was part of his powers or just him.
I licked my lips. “Crystal, sir.”
He nodded once and jerked his chin.
We walked into the observation room.
You always put the interrogatee in before the interrogator, that way they can stew or whatever.
Grant made a call and not three minutes later, two agents walked the psycho in from the hall’s entrance.
He didn’t look like a psycho.
He looked a bit younger than his thirty-five years, was around Grant’s height of six foot one, and kinda scrawny. His brown hair was a little shaggy, and he had a light layer of scruff that amplified his strong features. His dark brown eyes sparkled as we walked into the room, and he grinned at the mirror, showing off full lips and straight teeth.
Holy crap on a cracker, he was cute.
Well, I guess if he actually looked like a psycho, he wouldn’t have been able to lure that many people. He wasn’t the ‘jump out and grab ‘em’ type of psycho. Most of his victims were women he picked up in bars and clubs.
At least, the ones the authorities had found.
The rest of them could be along the same lines, but we weren’t sure.
I guess that was my job to figure out too.
Lucky me.
“You ready?” Grant asked.
Truck smiled at us through the glass… like he could see us through the double-sided mirror.
“This guy doesn’t have any kind of powers, right?” I asked.
Grant didn’t say anything.
“Sir?”
“Nothing on record,” Grant said.
“Are you sensing something?”
He paused again. “I don’t know. I don’t like this.”
He opened the door into the interrogation room and waved me through.
Truck smiled, lookin’ me up and down like we were in a bar, and finished by meeting my eyes.
I blushed.
“They weren’t exaggerat
ing,” Truck said. “You are beautiful. And so little.”
He stared into my eyes and I looked away, trying not to smile.
Shouldn’t a serial killer have seemed more… creepy? The words could’ve easily been creepy, but he was downright charming.
“I love shy women,” he said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name. I’m JB.”
“Special Agent Ryder,” I said.
He held up his hands, making the chains clink as they hit the end of their length. “I’d shake your hand, but I’m kind of tied up at the moment.”
I covered my smile.
Oh crap on a cracker and kittens too, I was in trouble.
“You’re here to talk to me,” Grant said, making me jump.
I stepped to the side and my boss sat across from Truck.
“Hey,” Truck said, “I’m JB. You must be Special Agent Grant. They told me about you too.”
Who was they?
I walked behind Truck, hovering in his blind spot. Interrogators do it all the time. It’s supposed to intimidate people.
JB, er, Truck… Truck, smiled at me in the mirror.
“And that’s not what I agreed to,” Truck said.
“You agreed to talk,” Grant said in a tone that would terrify me.
He has this really soft voice he gets when he’s angry. It’s so scary cuz you know he’s gonna do something when he has it.
I’ve seen him punch a criminal so hard the guy dropped like a load of bricks after using that voice, and he switched from talkin’ soft to screaming at another one, and broke that guy faster than a cowboy with a new colt.
“Where’s your dumping ground?” Grant asked.
Truck didn’t take his eyes off me and I shivered as I reached forward.
“Are you supposed to be touching the psycho?” Truck asked. “I don’t know.” He shook his head and tutted. “I could claim abuse, and since my lawyer isn’t here, you could get in real trouble.”
“The interview’s being recorded,” Grant said, still stone-cold calm. “She’s here to observe. You’re talking to me.”
“Nope.” Truck shrugged.
I took a deep breath, hand shakin’ as I lifted it again. Nope, not ready yet.
“I agreed to meet without a lawyer,” Truck said, “because I was promised an audience with a pretty, young agent. So unless she starts talking, and you leave, I’m not saying a word until my lawyer gets here.”
Grant met my eyes over Truck’s head.
I nodded and Truck’s eyes reached a new level of luminance as I reached out with my pinky.
I didn’t want any more contact with him than necessary.
I was already gonna have to boil my skin just from being attracted to him.
My pinky met flesh.
Flash.
The young boy, maybe thirteen, smiled at a little one, no more than five.
“It’s so cool; you got to see it,” the teen said, pulling the child’s hand.
The teen was Truck, had to be.
The little boy had the delicate face of an angel, floppy light blond curls, and the biggest green eyes I’d ever seen.
He nodded and followed, little legs going at super speed to keep up.
They tromped from the typical suburban neighborhood down the street to woods looming up at a dead end like they were trying to eat the bit of civilization humans had carved out.
The boys walked down a path obviously forged by hundreds of human feet over the years and hit a dense patch right before the ground sloped down.
“Over here,” teen Truck said, veering off the path to the right.
They plowed through the trees and Truck picked up a length of rope just lying on the ground. He grabbed the little boy’s arms and tied them behind his back.
The boy’s mouth moved and it took a moment for me to realize the sound had cut off.
Truck picked up a roll of duct tape and ripped off a piece, slapping it over the kid’s mouth.
Truck tied another rope over the one already holding the child’s hands behind his back and tossed it over a branch, making a crude pulley. Truck grabbed the end of the rope and yanked.
The little boy went up and his arms jerked up backwards.
I stumbled away from Truck, swallowing bile.
I’ve seen some terrible things in two years as a psychic.
But I’d never seen someone hurt a child with that kind of cold, planned heartlessness.
I swallowed again and managed to drag my gaze up, keeping my eyes unfocused as they passed Truck and I found Grant’s eyes.
Grant nodded once and I turned, hitting the door, Grant close behind.
I sobbed and bent over, wrappin’ my arms around myself soon as the door was closed.
“It’s okay.” Grant wrapped his thick arms around me, holding me tight against his chest as I babbled it out.
“And the entire time, I could feel him,” I said. “He didn’t feel guilty, or sad, or even crazy, he just wanted to see what would happen, like a kid holding a magnifying glass over an ant. That’s all that little boy was to him, nothing more than an ant.”
“That’s what other people are to psychopaths like this,” Grant said, as though that was supposed to comfort me.
Funny, it didn’t.
“I think that little boy was his first kill, or attack, or whatever. We need to find out what happened to him, General.”
“Can you handle being in there?” he asked, letting me go.
I turned, staying close so I could feel his body heat.
“Ariana,” he said, starin’ into my eyes like he was trying to read the answers off my brain, “if you can’t do this, say so.”
“I can do it. I’m fine.” I gulped and nodded.
“You are a horrible liar.”
I nodded again.
Grant opened the door and I wiped under my eyes before walkin’ back in.
Truck grinned like a teenage boy who just won a date with the homecoming queen.
“What was that?” Truck asked. “You seemed to lose it a little. And what are these?” He pointed at the incense bowl.
“Where did you bury the rest of your victims?” Grant asked, hovering behind the man along with me.
Truck couldn’t have looked more relaxed if he’d been sitting on a beach in Maui drinking piña coladas.
“Get me my lawyer, we’re done,” Truck said. “Unless you leave; then we’ll see if your little girl can’t talk it out of me.”
I looked at Grant.
The last vision was useless if I couldn’t find the location of his victims.
I couldn’t have gone through that for nothing.
“He’s all yours, Ryder,” Grant said, walking out.
He’d be watching from behind the mirror, but I was still alone in the room with the psycho.
“Please, sit,” Truck said. “I can’t stand sitting while a lady is standing. It’s so rude.”
I forced a smile and took a deep breath.
Okay, channel your inner Grant.
“I’m good standing,” I said. “Now, as my boss said, where is your dumping ground?”
“Your people found my dumping ground.”
“No, they found the latest one in Atlanta. We know there’s at least one more from your earlier kills, and since you grew up outside Nashville, we’re betting it’s around here.”
“And how do you know there’s more?” he asked, propping his chin on his hand, looking at me in the mirror.
“Because you told the agents who captured you as much.”
“I could have been lying.”
True, but the shrinks who analyzed him and, more importantly, Grant, didn’t think so.
“Our shrinks say you weren’t. So yeah, we’ve got to try to get it out of you.”
“Oh honey, you can get anything out of me you want.”
My stomach dropped and he smiled that same wide, almost innocent smile.
“You are going to be so much fun to play with,” he said.
I crossed my arms.
Let the games begin.
Chapter two
“Ryder,” Truck said. “What’s your first name? Ryder’s so informal. I’m JB, now it’s your turn.”
Do I tell or not?
Hell if I knew.
“Ariana,” I said.
“Helloooooo Ariiii-ahhna.” His eyebrows jumped. “Now we’re getting somewhere. What’s with the incense?” He took a deep sniff. “I’m guessing sandalwood.”
“It is.” I paced around to the side of him.
“Why?”
“It helps me think. Where are the bodies? Did you put them in the same place, a mass grave like in Atlanta? Or did you scatter them? One here, another in Knoxville, another in the Atlantic, another in North Carolina?”
I screwed up my courage, which basically required the mental version of a Phillips, a bright red one in my head, and reached out.
Focus on where he buried people. Nothin’ else matters. Well, the partner thing does. And the whole follow the money thing. Yeah, where’d the money come from? That’s a good one to focus on.
My finger met flesh.
Flash.
“Where am I?” the small woman screamed at the walls.
It looked like an unfinished basement room, cement walls, no windows, thin carpet, and barren save for a TV placed on a simple wooden shelf.
She rubbed her stomach then pounded on the door. “Why am I in here?”
She had shoulder length red hair, was a forties actress kind of pretty, and looked to be late teens.
She was also terrified. Her fear smothered me in a hot, sticky blanket. She felt dizzy and disoriented from the drug he slipped her.
She pounded on the door a few more times. Nothing answered her. If he was watching, he refused to respond.
“Fine!” she screamed, turning on the TV.
The screen fuzzed and she hit play on the VCR.
Truck’s much younger face appeared on the screen.
“You finally figured it out, congratulations. The human body can live about three days without water. You have that long to get out. There is a way out, I promise, you just have to figure it out. Have fun.”
The tape ended and the girl’s fear flushed through her.
She bent and tossed her cookies - actually, it looked like half-digested salmon.
The acrid stench burned up her nose and she gagged as she wiped her mouth.
The vision fast-forwarded.
