Blood Ties

by Kay Hooper

  “I can handle it,” Hollis said, hoping she could.

  “I don’t doubt you can. It just won’t be easy. Look, Hollis, we don’t know how the gray time works, but we do know Diana has always been convinced there are souls who end up there, disconnected from their bodies. Trapped, at least for a while, before they can move on.”

  “Or come back. Yes.” Hollis was praying DeMarco would keep his mouth shut; they hadn’t gotten the chance that morning to report the events of the night to Miranda, especially the part about Hollis now being drawn to the gray time whenever Diana opened the door. And Hollis wanted it to stay that way, at least for now. Because she had no doubt that Miranda would not approve of the risky plan taking shape in her mind.

  “You believe she’s there?”

  “The doc said her heart stopped twice. We know it stopped once back in Serenade. If the gray time really is a corridor between this world and the next, I think it’s likely that’s where Diana’s spirit would go. It’s a place she’s comfortable in, confident, almost at home. It could be a refuge for her in a situation like this one.”

  “A place to hide?”

  “Maybe. With all that trauma to her body… maybe. She told me Bishop believes her conscious and subconscious minds haven’t fully integrated yet after all the years of being medicated, and one thing her subconscious had gotten very good at was protecting itself. What her subconscious, her spirit, knows best is the gray time. I really think retreating there would be almost automatic. If so, she’s still halfway in this world, this reality. At least half alive. She might try to contact one of us. Maybe Quentin. Or maybe me.”

  “I agree she may have gone there. But we don’t know if her connection with Quentin is strong enough to keep her anchored on this side. Not if she truly died.” Miranda’s voice was on the edge of emotionless but didn’t quite make it.

  “All the more reason for me to stay close. Even if she’s lost that anchor, another medium might be able to see her. Speak to her. Maybe even help her.”

  DeMarco spoke up for the first time to say, “You don’t see the spirits of people you know, coworkers. Right?”

  “I haven’t. That doesn’t mean I can’t. And since Diana’s a medium, it might make it easier for me to see her. Maybe. I just… believe I should stay, Miranda.”

  “Then you’ll stay.”

  “So will I,” DeMarco said.

  Without looking at him, Hollis said, “You don’t have to.”

  “I’ll stay,” he said to Miranda. “If Diana was the target and not just one of us chosen at random, our insane sniper might decide to come here and finish the job.”

  “The thought had occurred.”

  “So I’ll stay. Even without being at her bedside or outside her door, I should be able to sense a threat to her.”

  “Without a connection to her?”

  “I still have her blood on me,” he replied, his voice remote. “That’s enough of a connection.”

  Miranda didn’t question that. “Okay.”

  “Galen’s on-site now?”

  “He flew one of the choppers.”

  “Then you’ve got the best watchdog on the team.” DeMarco nodded. “And if you tell him I said that, I’ll deny it.”

  Miranda smiled faintly. “Gotcha.”

  “What about the twins?”

  Unsurprised that he knew, she replied, “Hopefully still in the background, unless the sniper spotted Gabe. But even if he was spotted, Roxanne certainly wasn’t. We also have a few more team members on-site now, as the sheriff noted.”

  “Might be playing into the sniper’s hands,” DeMarco pointed out. “With so many of us here, he could be setting us up for a turkey shoot.”

  “Don’t worry, we won’t make it that easy for him.” Without waiting for a response, she added, “I’ll speak to the doctor again before I leave and make sure you’re both cleared to stay near Diana—for her own protection.”

  Hollis said, “Thanks. And keep us posted on what’s happening in Serenade, will you?”

  “I will.” Miranda turned her head just as Sheriff Duncan appeared in the doorway. He was carrying two overnight bags and looked somewhat bemused.

  “Your pilot asked me to bring these in,” he told Miranda, as he set the bags in a couple of the waiting-room chairs. “He seemed to be sure that Hollis and Reese would be staying.”

  “Thanks, Des.” Without explaining a thing, Miranda merely said to DeMarco, “There’s also a change of clothes for Quentin in your bag. Assuming either of you can persuade him to leave Diana long enough for a hot shower and a meal, that is.”

  “We’ll do our best.”

  Miranda nodded. “One last thing. I need to contact Diana’s father and let him know what happened.”

  With a slight frown, Hollis said, “I… don’t think she’d want that.”

  “Neither do I. But she hadn’t decided absolutely to completely cut that tie, and absent written instructions to the contrary, I have to follow procedure. If you don’t already, you should both know that Elliot Brisco is an extremely powerful man, and he’s not been at all happy about Diana’s involvement with the FBI.”

  “Understatement,” Hollis murmured.

  “Yeah, he’s likely to be spewing fire and brimstone.”

  DeMarco smiled, though only someone who knew him well would have seen wry amusement in the expression. Anybody else probably would have felt the need to find a warm corner somewhere. “If I could handle Samuel’s brand of fire and brimstone, I imagine I can handle Brisco’s.”

  “True enough. Just wanted to warn you. And to tell you that one thing Diana did put in writing, as per procedure before coming on her first assignment, was that Quentin holds her medical power of attorney. Which means that in addition to being worried about Diana’s condition and pissed about the direction she chose for her life, Brisco is also going to be powerless to make medical decisions for her. Men like him really don’t like to be powerless.”

  “Oh, boy,” Hollis said with a sigh. “Aren’t we going to have fun.”

  “Well, you should have at least a brief respite before you have to deal with him; he’s likely to be at one of his companies on the West Coast or in New York, possibly in London or even Hong Kong.”

  “I’ll hope for the latter. And find a way to make peace with my conscience if he gets here too late.”

  “And we’ll all hope that’s not even an issue,” Miranda told her.

  “Amen.”

  “See you two later.” She briskly gathered up the sheriff as she left the waiting room, allowing him no chance to do anything but wave at the two remaining behind.

  “It’s not a risky plan,” DeMarco said as soon as they were alone in the room, “it’s an insane plan.”

  “Maybe, but thanks for not giving it away.” Hollis frowned at him as several thoughts occurred. “Or do you think Miranda got it too? Because I was broadcasting?”

  “You weren’t. And after what’s happened in the last two days, Miranda’s shield is about as solid as I’ve ever known it to be. And a lot more solid now than it was when you got through before the bomb went off. My guess is that she and Bishop close every possible chink in that shield when they’re under attack or expect to be. It’s a trade-off: a diminished ability to use the extra senses but also a lot more protection.”

  Hollis nodded but said, “I wasn’t broadcasting?”

  “Not so much. Either you’re learning to shield or else an insane plan makes you secretive on every level.”

  Then how could you read me? She didn’t ask aloud but stared at him, still frowning.

  He returned her suspicious gaze with a completely unreadable one of his own.

  Hollis decided not to ask out loud. “Anyway, I don’t know if I’ll even have the chance. I’m way too wound up to sleep.”

  “I won’t stand by and let you sedate yourself, Hollis.”

  “Will you quit doing that?”

  “Just making an educated guess.”


  She wished she believed that.

  “The point,” DeMarco said, “is that even if you managed to get to the gray time and find Diana there—what then? What is it you believe you can do to help?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You nearly didn’t make it out the last time.”

  Hollis opened her mouth to respond, then closed it.

  DeMarco was nodding. “Maybe because the two of you were under a kind of attack from someone else in the gray time. An attack—and an attempt to deceive Diana.”

  “We don’t know what any of that meant.”

  “We know Diana was shot yesterday. When the shooter could have aimed at any of us, he picked her. I don’t believe it was random in any sense of the word. He aimed for Diana, and he hit her. Put that together with the gray time visit the other night and I’d call it a pretty goddamn good indication somebody is out to hurt her, at the very least.”

  “That’s not what you said earlier.”

  “Well, it wasn’t exactly something I could be so definite about to Miranda without going into what happened Tuesday night. Which you very clearly didn’t want me to do.”

  Damn telepaths.

  Hollis drew a breath and let it out slowly. “Okay. Granted. There’s a better than even chance someone has targeted Diana. A chance that person can attack her spirit as well as her body, and maybe even more violently. But… Look, when you pulled me out of the gray time, you weren’t actually in there with us, right?”

  He nodded again. “Right. It was more like I reached in an arm to pull you out. I had the sense of coldness, of something… unpleasantly nightmarish. But I wasn’t there. Didn’t see or hear anything.”

  “Nightmarish. That’s a good word for a very creepy place.”

  “A place Diana is very, very familiar with,” DeMarco reminded her.

  “Yes. A place she’s visited most of her life. But you weren’t there. You don’t understand how strange and… lonely… that place really is. How absolutely desolate.”

  “Hollis—”

  “She’s always gone there with a purpose, to help someone else. I think that’s one reason she’s been strong there, how she’s been able to move through that place or time or whatever it is without being the least bit afraid. But… what if, this time, she knows, Reese? What if she’s in there, stuck in there all alone, and she knows what happened to her?”

  “Then I’m sorry for her. But I still don’t know what it is you believe you can do to help her.”

  The hell of it was, Hollis didn’t know either. But she also knew she couldn’t just stand by without trying something.

  Anything.

  Ten

  ROXANNE WOLF CHECKED the perimeter of Serenade for the fourth time, moving slowly and being very, very thorough. She also had to be extremely cautious—because it was quite dark all around the outskirts of downtown due to the power outage, and because the small town was still playing reluctant host to more cops, more FBI agents, and way too much media, not to mention electric-company crews still working to restore power.

  Which meant there were a hell of a lot of unfamiliar faces wandering around, strangers roaming not only the scene of the bomb blast but the entire town, even this late.

  Flashlights jabbed through the darkness here and there, several times narrowly missing Roxanne as she slipped through the night.

  “I could trip over him and not know it,” she muttered softly.

  He could be right in the middle of everything, Gabriel agreed as his twin returned to the roof of a building very near the edge of town, where she had one of the best vantage points possible—and three separate ways down.

  “Normally I’d say there was a slim chance,” Roxanne told him. “But not this time. This bastard has balls enough for anything. Hell, he could be carrying a badge of some kind, or be tech support or EMS or one of the media; in all the chaos, who’s going to think about screening I.D.s to make damn sure everybody is who they claim to be?”

  Miranda will.

  “When she gets back here, sure. But it’ll take way more time than I like to check everybody.” Roxanne raised her binoculars and studied the brightly lit center of downtown. Dozens of cops in various uniforms and nearly as many FBI agents, wearing windbreakers sporting the acronym prominently, were still moving about with clipboards and notebooks and the tools necessary to interview witnesses and collect and tag the evidence literally scattered over two blocks.

  The media people remaining this late had been herded into one area at the north end of Main Street, held back from the cops and technicians working the scene by yellow crime-scene tape and several watchful deputies.

  The part-time deputies, Roxanne had noted, looked more than a little shell-shocked, but they were clinging to training and doing their best to be professional in the face of chaos none of them could have been prepared to face working in this pleasant small town.

  Picture-postcard perfect. Gabe’s voice was wry in her mind. The chamber might want to rethink the advertising.

  “Yeah.”

  The muted roar of several portable generators powering the big work lights was the loudest sound in the otherwise unnatural quiet of the small town. It set Roxanne’s teeth on edge. She had the restless, skin-crawling uneasiness that warned her something darker than the night was prowling Serenade, and she had learned to trust that very human sense.

  Yeah, he’s close. But I can’t quite get him. It’s almost like… there’s too much negative energy blocking me. Interference of some kind. Maybe the violence of the bomb. Or maybe something else.

  “Maybe just him. Right in the middle of everything, like you said. Why do I feel like he knows us a hell of a lot better than we know him?”

  If he’s been watching long enough, he very well could. He must have found our tracker and ditched his car. Came back here with a different ride. And he’s probably been on foot since then, moving around. We won’t be finding him or his things in a motel room, not again.

  “Dammit. I wish Miranda would get back here.”

  She’ll be here soon. In the meantime, whatever the other cops and the media are doing, the SCU agents are focusing where they need to. Identifying that staged shooter on the theater’s roof. Although…

  “Although what?”

  I’m beginning to wonder if that even matters, Rox. Five’ll get you ten when they I.D. the guy they’ll find he was a hunter out in the woods yesterday, maybe last night.

  “Because?”

  Because those were the clothes he was wearing, because the backpack held minimal rations and camping gear, and because I don’t believe our guy had all that much time to get fancy.

  Roxanne shifted a bit to keep her muscles from cramping up but was wary of moving very much, even though it was dark.

  “So he found an easy victim and just left him up here with the gun. Makes sense. But…”

  But what?

  “I sensed the shooter on that roof, Gabe.”

  Sure you did—at first, before we got to the old theater building. But by the time we got there, you were already saying what you felt was different, odd.

  “Okay, but if I was sensing him because he’d been there, how’d he get off that roof so fast—and get himself positioned at street level at the corner of the courthouse blocks away?”

  They knew he’d been there because he had left them a mocking bit of proof: a shell casing, standing neatly on end right there on the concrete—with a circle of red chalk around it just to make sure the dumb-ass police couldn’t possibly miss it.

  Bastard.

  I don’t know, Rox. I still doubt he took the chance of coming out the way he must have gone in, by the front door. Too many people would have seen him leave. Maybe he had a rope and managed to rappel down the outside of the building while we were inside. He could have come down in that little alley between the theater and the next building over. I doubt anybody would have seen him.

  “Maybe—though we didn’t find any sign a g
rappling hook was used, did we?”

  No. But we weren’t really looking for that, were we?

  “Point is, I shouldn’t have felt anything at all once the real shooter was off that roof, not if the dead guy was an innocent victim.”

  Maybe you were picking up residual energy from the gun, Gabriel offered.

  “Yeah. And maybe it was something else.”

  Like what?

  “I don’t know. But the possibilities are scaring the hell out of me.”

  From another vantage point not so very far from where he was perfectly aware Roxanne watched, the sniper did his own sweep of the town, gazing through infrared binoculars of a highly advanced design, his lips pursing unconsciously as he noted the continued presence of numerous law-enforcement officers.

  That wouldn’t make things easier.

  Not that he cared. He loved a challenge. Besides, it was a not-unplanned-for development.

  He changed the settings on the binoculars as he focused on the brightly lit few blocks around the heart of town, where most of the activity was centered. He spotted one individual in particular down there, tracked the methodical and professional actions with a critical eye, and waited for a moment of stillness and privacy to make contact.

  Any trouble?

  The response came back immediately, strong and clear.

  Of course not. The I.D. is absolutely authentic and so am I. With all the new people here on the scene, nobody’s going to question me. They’ll never suspect a thing.

  BJ wasn’t so sure. Maybe and maybe not.

  I’m telling you, they won’t expect this, especially if you keep doing your job. And he keeps doing his. Where is he?

  You don’t know?

  Don’t play games with me, BJ. If you aren’t keeping a leash on him, we’re all fucked.

  He’s occupied with his latest toy, all right? He’ll be perfectly happy for at least the next eight or ten hours.

  And he won’t be found?

  Something else BJ wasn’t too sure of, but he didn’t allow even a tinge of doubt to creep into his response. Not a chance in hell.