by Kay Hooper
“About the same for me. Except that it seems obvious she’s been out here longer than the male victim.”
“Yes. The bear wasn’t the first scavenger to find her.”
Hollis didn’t like the silence that fell between them, so she filled it with what amounted to thinking aloud. It was becoming something of a habit with her during investigations. Because, after all, with telepaths always underfoot, what the hell….
Besides, she wondered if he’d agree with her conclusion.
“This body was left—what—a good fifty yards off the nearest trail?”
“About that.”
“Place like this, nobody’s likely to be riding or hiking. The trees and underbrush would hide anything left here from the air even now, without full summer foliage.”
“Once it greens up, the kudzu would just about ensure anything left here would be hidden from two feet away. In any direction.”
Hollis nodded. “This is a fairly level spot, but the slope is steep above and below it. Not all that easy to get to. Between the terrain and the wildlife, the chances of discovery are virtually nil. Or would have been, if we hadn’t been led so far off the beaten paths. So…”
“So, unlike the other body, this one was not intended to be found.” DeMarco considered for a moment. “I wonder which is the most significant—that he was meant to be found or that she wasn’t.”
That angle hadn’t occurred to Hollis. Still thinking out loud, she said, “The killer—assuming it was the same killer, of course—couldn’t have assumed we’d search this far out after finding the other body.” She frowned. “I don’t like two assumptions in one sentence.”
“One’s a negative,” DeMarco pointed out.
“Does that matter?”
“Maybe. It’s not a wrong assumption, I’d say. In fact, the location of the other body should have guaranteed police focus would have been away from this area. And even with our expanded search, it’s well outside the grid. There’d be no reason to imagine any of us would have found this body.”
“If the killer knows police procedure, sure. If it’s the same killer.” She paused, then said, “Are you suggesting the guy on the trail could have been intended as a distraction, to prevent anybody from finding her? Because it seems to me she was a lot less likely to be found if we hadn’t been here in the first place, combing the area looking for evidence in another crime.”
“Maybe our killer is very paranoid. Or maybe he couldn’t risk even the chance that we might find this body.”
“Because he has a connection to her? Because she wasn’t a random stranger to him?”
“Could be.”
“Then why not just do a better job of disposing of the body? He could have buried her.” Hollis didn’t know why she was arguing with DeMarco; his possibilities made as much sense as her own did.
“Not out here. Too much granite to end up with anything but a uselessly shallow grave. And where there isn’t granite, the roots of these trees would make digging by hand difficult and time-consuming if not impossible.”
“There are easier places to dig.”
“Granted. But maybe he was short on time. Maybe he had to get rid of the body in a hurry.”
“Okay. But—” Hollis felt it before she saw any sign of it. Tension, so sudden and powerful that it was like a live current in the air. Then DeMarco turned his head, looking at her, almost looking through her, and she saw his eyes change in a heartbeat, his pupils dilating as if he had been thrust without warning into pitch-black darkness.
For the first time in months, she was able to see his aura radiating outward at least eight or ten inches from his body, and it was unlike any she’d ever seen before, distinctly unlike his normal reddish-orange high-energy aura: In this moment his aura was a deep indigo shot through with violet and silvery streaks.
She barely had time to grasp all that before she realized he was lunging toward her. Even as he knocked her off her feet and carried her to the ground, she felt something tug at the shoulder of her jacket and heard the distinct, weirdly hollow craa-aack of a rifle.
——
Diana did have an almost uncanny sense of direction, a talent she had discovered only in the last year or so, but her physical conditioning and endurance, unlike that of most of the other team members, were still considerably under par.
She hated that.
No matter how many times Quentin or Miranda reminded her that she was playing serious catch-up after spending almost her entire adult life in a senses-dulling haze of various medications, she couldn’t escape the feeling that she should have been… further along by now. Physically stronger, at the very least.
“You’re stronger than you know,” Bishop had said, only a couple of weeks before.
Yeah, right.
The truth was that she had drifted through her life, completely detached, uninvolved in… anything. Diana honestly wished she could believe that all the doctors who had tried one medicine or therapy or treatment after the other had done it only because they’d had her best interests at heart and sincerely thought she suffered from some unnamed mental illness. But what she believed was that her father was a wealthy, powerful man, and what Elliot Brisco wanted, he got.
He’d wanted his only daughter’s life under his control. And though he still claimed his actions stemmed from love and concern, Diana had come to the conclusion that he had been driven as much by that need to control what was “his” as by a deeply rooted fear of anything he didn’t understand.
Such as psychic abilities.
Diana tried to shove the painful musing aside, wishing her father hadn’t intensified his efforts in the last couple of months to try to convince her one more time that she’d made a mistake in joining the FBI. And, especially, the SCU.
It was no accident, she thought, that he had been applying more pressure just when she was becoming involved in her first field assignment.
Consciously or not, he knew exactly how to undermine her confidence in herself.
Never mind him. Concentrate on the job at hand, dammit.
Leaning against a handy maple tree to catch her breath, she decided that the shortcut that had seemed such a good idea really wasn’t. The trade-off of avoiding the greater distance of twists and turns for a more direct route meant she was forced to do a hell of a lot of pretty rugged climbing to get over a ridge.
“Suck it up,” she muttered to herself. “You’re surrounded by people who don’t even get the concept of quit.”
That reminder did little for her self-confidence, but at least it caused her to push herself away from the support of the tree and press onward.
And upward.
No more than twenty or so yards farther, near the crest of the ridge, she stopped to lean against another tree, but this time not only because of her burning legs and thudding heart.
Quentin was near.
It was weird, that… sensation. More than knowledge or awareness, it was a tangible connection she couldn’t really explain—and had so far refused to examine closely. Even after all these months, she invariably caught herself resisting, pulling away from that powerful inner tugging, not allowing herself to be drawn toward Quentin as every other instinct insisted she must be.
Bishop said it was because she had lived so much of her life under someone else’s control and that, once all the medications were out of her system and her father’s authority over her had been legally and practically severed, she was bound to instinctively fight for her independence—even against a connection that posed no threat to that independence.
He had said this out of the blue one day while he was teaching her a few basic martial arts moves, and Diana had somewhat indignantly believed he did it only to distract her so he could maintain the upper hand in the match—until she thought about it later. First she recognized that he had hardly needed any sort of distraction, given his skills. And she recognized second that not only was he right in what he’d told her but also that she never
would have brought up the subject herself, and what he’d told her was something she really needed to know.
Which figured. Bishop, she had discovered, was like that. He picked up on the things one didn’t want to discuss and matter-of-factly made one discuss them.
Or at least consider them. She hadn’t been willing to discuss that particular subject, her prickly defenses going up immediately. She just wasn’t ready to talk about her father and all the baggage he’d left her with. Not with Bishop.
And only very rarely and briefly with Quentin.
That made her feel guilty as hell, even though she was reasonably certain he knew exactly what was going on in her head. Because Quentin, with highly uncharacteristic patience, had not demanded or even asked for any kind of commitment from her, giving her all the time she needed to come to terms with both her new life and startling abilities and with a tie to him that had nothing to do with domination.
At least she thought that was why he hadn’t—
“Diana?”
Thank God he’s not a telepath.
“Hi.” She was relieved to note that she’d had time to catch her breath and didn’t sound as out of shape as she was.
“We heard shots.” He hadn’t drawn his weapon but was visibly tense, his gaze scanning their surroundings warily.
“Hollis and I ran into a bear.” When he quickly focused on her face, she added, “Not literally. But we needed to scare it away. It found something, Quentin. Another body. Or what’s left of one.”
“Shit. Murder victim?”
“We think so.”
He let out a short little breath. ‘Okay. Miranda’s on her way with a couple of Duncan’s deputies. She said Reese would be there with Hollis before we get back to them.”
“How does she know—” Diana broke off as she realized.
Quentin was nodding. “I’ve never quite figured out how she and Bishop do it, but they always seem to know where each of us is at any given moment, in relation to them and to each other.”
“That’s a little… unsettling,” Diana admitted.
“You’ll get used to it.” He paused, reflecting, then added, “Or not. Come on, let’s go.”
“You’re assuming I can find my way back there.”
“I know you can find your way back there.” His voice was matter-of-fact. “You’re as good as a compass.”
“My one skill,” she muttered.
“One of many. Your father called again last night, didn’t he?”
“He calls nearly every night,” she said, trying to make her voice careless. “He’s stubborn as hell. So?”
“So stop letting him damage your confidence. Diana, you’re a valued member of this team because you have abilities and skills. In case you haven’t noticed, the SCU isn’t exactly the easiest team to join, and nobody gets in unless Bishop knows they can contribute to an investigation.”
“Yeah, but—”
“No buts. You earned this. Okay?”
After a moment, she nodded. “Okay.” She turned to begin to retrace her steps, thankful that the way back, at least, was mostly downhill. “Do you think we have two killers?” she asked over her shoulder.
“I think it’s unlikely. Stranger things have happened—certainly when we’re around—but the odds are against it.”
“That’s what we—” The craa-aack of a shot cut her off, and Diana jerked to a stop, half-turning to look at Quentin. “What the hell?”
“That was a rifle. And none of us is carrying a rifle.”
“Where did the shot come from? With all the echoes, I couldn’t tell.”
“I think it came from the other side of the valley.”
“A hunter?”
“I don’t think so.”
Diana didn’t have to be urged to continue on. Or to hurry.
“Stay down.”
DeMarco’s heavy weight lay on her for only an instant before he was rolling away, weapon in hand, eyes narrowed as he peered through the underbrush to scan the mountain slopes surrounding the valley below them. One of his hands lay only inches from the murdered woman’s skull.
“Sorry,” he added briefly.
Without moving otherwise, Hollis fingered the neat hole in the shoulder of her jacket and managed a shaky laugh. “Sorry? Because you probably saved my life?”
“As fast as you heal, that’s debatable. No, I’m sorry I had to knock you down like that without warning.”
“There wasn’t really time for a warning. I get that, believe me.” Hollis was a bit proud of the fact that her voice was—almost—as calm as his. She rolled onto her belly but continued to hug the cold ground as she drew her weapon. “I don’t suppose that shot could have been accidental.” It wasn’t a question.
He answered anyway. “Probably not. That was a high-powered rifle, and I doubt it’s the sort of weapon used by hunters in these parts.”
“Then somebody was shooting at me?”
“At one of us. Or intending to shake us up.”
Hollis wondered if anything had ever shaken up DeMarco. Somehow she doubted it.
“I don’t see anything,” she said after a moment, scanning the area as he was—or at least as much as she could make out through the underbrush. Not that she was all that sure what she was looking for. “Speaking of which, how the hell did you know that shot was coming?”
He didn’t reply immediately, and when he did his tone was almost indifferent. “I caught a glimpse of something from the corner of my eye. Probably sunlight glinting off the barrel of the gun.”
Hollis glanced up at what had become, hours before, a heavily overcast sky and said, “Uh-huh. Okay, keep the mysterious military secrets to yourself. I don’t mind being told it’s none of my business.” Despite the words, her voice was, to say the least, sarcastic.
“It’s not a military secret, Hollis.”
Something she couldn’t identify had crept into that indifferent tone, and for some obscure reason it pleased her. “No?”
“No.” He glanced at her, then away, as he added, “I can feel it when a gun is pointed at me or anywhere close to me.”
“Always?”
“So far as I know.”
“Is that a psychic ability?”
Again, he hesitated briefly before replying. “Bishop calls it a primal ability. Guns pose lethal threats: I sense a threat. It’s a survival mechanism.”
“Sounds like a handy one, especially in our line of work.”
“It has been, yes.”
“You still sensing a threat?”
“Not an imminent one.”
“Meaning the gun isn’t pointed this way anymore, but the shooter might still be… wherever he or she was?”
“Something like that.”
“Then maybe we can get up off the ground now?”
He sent her another glance. “I could be wrong, you know.”
“Are you?”
He didn’t answer immediately, which surprised her. From the first time they’d met, she had sized up DeMarco as a man full of self-confidence. Possibly to a fault. She figured he was the sort who would view any hesitation as weakness.
That was one reason she always felt slightly on the defensive with him, because she was prone to hesitate. A lot.
Deciding this wasn’t one of those times, she gathered herself to get up off the ground. Instantly, DeMarco’s free hand shot out and grabbed her wrist, holding her still just long enough.
The bullet hit the tree nearest them with a dull thud, bark went flying, and the craa-aack of the shot echoed as the first one had.
If Hollis had gotten up as planned, she likely would have taken that shot just about dead center in her chest.
DeMarco released her wrist. “Now we can get up.” He did.
Hollis remained where she was for a moment, studying the reddening marks of his grip on her arm. Then she accepted his outstretched hand and got to her feet. It struck her as she did that she was completely confident in DeMarco’s certaint
y that the gunman would not shoot again, and she wondered about that.
She really did.
“So it was intended for me,” she said, holding her voice steady despite her pounding heart. “I was the target.”
A rare frown drew his brows together as he continued to scan the mountain slopes facing them. “Maybe. Depending on his position, we could have been at least partially visible even when we were on the ground. Or maybe he couldn’t see you about to get up, and that was just a final shot aimed where we were a few minutes ago, intended to keep us pinned down here and give him more time to get out of the area. Either way is possible. We should be able to determine a rough trajectory using the bullet that struck that tree, and the first one if we can find it.”
“And if the trajectory confirms what you suspect?” she asked, knowing he had a point to make.
“Then the shooter was on the other side of the valley.”
Hollis looked, then frowned as she slowly holstered her gun. “I’m not all that good at estimating distance, but… that’s not close.”
“No. But for a trained sharpshooter with a good scope, not an impossible distance.”
“You’re thinking he missed on purpose?”
“I’m thinking with the sort of gun and scope I suspect he’s using, he was more likely to hit what he was aiming at than to miss with the only two shots he fired.”
“He might have missed with the first shot only because you were quicker. Have I said thank you, by the way?”
“You’re welcome.” But DeMarco was staring toward the other side of the valley, his eyes narrowed again. “Why draw attention to his presence? Dumb idea. We wouldn’t suspect he was there otherwise. He could have watched every move we made here.”
“Why would he want to?”
“That’s the question. Possible answers: Because he wants to see us in action. Because he wants to observe our reaction to this victim, this dump site. Because we’ve been here only a couple of hours, new players he wants to get to know. Or… because he likes to watch. Likes to see how people—law enforcement or otherwise—react to what he’s left for us.”
