Blood Ties

by Kay Hooper

  “You’re out of your mind.”

  As if he hadn’t heard that, Bishop said, “It was an interesting tactic you chose, that attack on three levels. First Samuel’s rampage, keeping myself and the team fully occupied, then you dripping poison into the Director’s ears about the unit and me, and, finally, making sure I’d know about that poison. And wonder where you got it.”

  “Maybe you have a traitor on the team, Bishop.” Despite his best efforts, the words emerged viciously.

  “No. That’s what you wanted me to think. Wanted all of us to think. So we’d doubt one another, or at the very least wonder. So the trust painstakingly built up between us for years would begin to break down. And that was really where you overplayed your hand. Because that was … very personal, that part of the attack. That was an attempt to gut me—and the SCU. So I had to wonder who could possibly hate me that much. And why.”

  “I’d be wondering about that traitor if I were you.” He couldn’t let that go, still believing it was the wedge he needed.

  Still hoping.

  A very faint smile curved Bishop’s hard mouth. “I stopped wondering about that when we faced Samuel at his church. When I felt the power of his mind firsthand. We didn’t have a traitor. What we had was an enemy capable of creeping among us—psychically. Unseen. Taking note of what we said and did. And much of what we thought.

  “That’s the ultimate irony, you know. That you trusted the information Samuel gave you—perfectly accurate information—without questioning where he came by it. Maybe you knew, deep down, what he’d tell you if you asked. Maybe that’s why you didn’t ask.”

  “You need help, Bishop. You’re a sick man.”

  “I’m sick and tired of your crusade. And so is the Director, just so you know. He’s given me a complete statement of his dealings with you. And he’s given me the discretion to use it however I please.”

  His mouth twisted. “He’s a gutless wonder.”

  “No, he’s an honorable man. An ethical man. I knew that. And I knew he would ultimately decide to support the SCU. A decision he undoubtedly would have come to sooner if not for your poison.”

  He was silent.

  “Not that I really needed most of the information Director Hughes was able to give me. I already knew most of it. He was just confirmation.”

  “How could you know?”

  Bishop shook his head slightly. “You’re good at a lot of things, but this? This is what I do. Investigate. I had to find a bitter enemy with very deep pockets, and unfortunately there are several. So it took time. Time and far too much of my attention. But one by one, the others were ruled out. It’s taken me months, but eventually you were the only one left.”

  “The Sherlock Holmes maxim? Eliminate the impossible and whatever remains must be truth? I’m surprised at you, Bishop. That’s so terribly… old school.”

  “If old school works, I use it. I use anything that works. Everything. Every tool I can get my hands on—except for one. I never make a deal with the devil.”

  “If you’re implying I did—”

  “I’m not implying. I’m stating. You knew what Samuel was, what he was capable of. But you believed he could get you what you wanted, and that was all you cared about. As long as the SCU was destroyed, I was destroyed, then nothing else mattered to you.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The words were almost mechanical.

  “I wish I could believe you didn’t. I wish I could believe there were lines you wouldn’t cross no matter how determined you were to win. To destroy me. But I don’t believe that. You knew. You just didn’t give a shit about anyone else.”

  “I’m going to ruin you, Bishop. No matter what you think you have on me, it won’t stand up in court. And by the time my attorneys are finished with you, the FBI won’t have you. Your own wife won’t have you.”

  “Oh, it won’t go to court,” Bishop said, ignoring the more personal claim. “You’re right. I don’t have enough evidence against you for a court case. Not yet, at any rate, though I’m sure there’s some to be found when my people know exactly where to dig.”

  He managed another laugh. “Good luck with that. And since you have no evidence to support these wild accusations, I’ll be on my way. You can talk to my attorneys if you have anything further to say to me.”

  “No, what I have to say to you, I’ll say to you now.” Bishop picked up the folder lying on the table in front of him and slid it across to the other man. “I want you to take a look at what your money bought you.”

  “I’m not going to—”

  Flatly, Bishop said, “There are two agents waiting outside that door. You’ll take a look inside that folder, or I’ll have you arrested the instant you step outside. Believe me, I do have enough evidence to detain you. And question you formally. And make a hell of a public mess for your PR people to clean up.” He paused, watching the other man seethe, then added, “Or we can avoid all that—at least for now—and you can look inside the folder. Your choice.”

  After a moment, he reached stiffly for the folder. He opened it, his expression impassive. But then he sucked in a breath, the color drained from his face, and he all but fell as he fumbled for the chair in front of him and sank into it. The manila folder dropped to the floor, leaving him clutching the single photograph it had contained.

  Bishop watched him, feeling not a single twinge of compassion for what he knew very well was genuine shock, grief, and guilt. “I could have shown you all the victims of your crusade. But I decided this one was what you needed to see. Money can buy a lot of things. But what it can never buy, what nothing can ever buy, is complete control over events. Whatever you thought your money was buying, that’s what it bought.”

  Elliot Brisco stared down at the stark photograph of his only surviving daughter lying in the street in a pool of her own blood. “It isn’t true. This is—lie. This is a lie. She isn’t dead. She isn’t dead?” His voice was shaking, his hands were shaking, and when he met Bishop’s gaze his eyes were wide and curiously blank.

  “She’s fighting for her life. And it doesn’t look good, according to the doctors. A sniper’s bullet can do terrible things to a human body.” His voice was measured, steady. Implacable. “She was collateral damage at best, in the wrong place at the wrong time. At worst, she was a target he intended to hit for reasons of his own. Either way, you’ve lost whatever control you imagined you had over the situation.”

  “He… Who are you talking about? Who did this?”

  “Your pet monster. Samuel.”

  “He’s dead. Samuel’s dead.”

  “Let’s just say he left a…legacy behind to survive him. With orders to finish the job you gave him money to start.”

  “Bastard… bastard…”

  Bishop didn’t ask whether that referred to himself or the killer—killers—he was after. He merely said, “So you’re going to tell me who’s been on Samuel’s private payroll all this time, on your private payroll. Because that’s who’s doing this. That’s who’s down in Serenade conducting a war. You’re going to tell me who it is, and you’re going to tell me everything else you know or believe you know about the situation. Everything. So that maybe, just maybe, I can stop this from getting any worse than it already is.”

  Serenade

  The dogs had had no luck in tracking the sniper, but by four o’clock Thursday afternoon the pair of bloodhounds known in the area as the very best did manage to find Acting Deputy Bobbie Silvers.

  Or what was left of her.

  They found her just outside the town limits, her naked body tumbled into a shallow ditch off a side road and partially covered over with wet and rotting autumn leaves.

  Miranda stood gazing down at the pale face she had carefully uncovered, only distantly aware of Sheriff Duncan’s broken curses and the utter stillness and silence of the other deputies and agents gathered around. She looked at that very young face she had barely noticed when it was alive, remembering
how Bobbie had worked overtime to find information for them.

  Eager. Smart. Ambitious.

  Gone.

  Finally, Miranda lifted her gaze and found Dean Ramsey nearby. “It’s a dump site, but we’ll get what we can. Crime-scene protocol,” she said quietly.

  “Copy that.” He moved away, gathering a couple of other agents with a gesture so they could begin the work of locating, photographing, tagging, and preserving what evidence there was to be found.

  “Miranda.” Tony was at her side. “I’m feeling a little exposed, even with the trees and our vests.”

  “We have people covering this area,” she pointed out. “Media crawling all over the area outside our perimeter, despite our warnings. And there are no buildings near enough to provide a clear line of sight. I wasn’t trained as a sniper, but I can tell you he’d be a fool to be up in one of these trees close enough to see us. So far he hasn’t shown a sign of being a fool.”

  Tony glanced around. “You have a point. Several, in fact. Still, if the plan is to spend any kind of time here, I say we move the mobile command center down here. Otherwise, we should go back into town.”

  “And what makes you think town is any safer?”

  “Nothing solid,” he confessed. “But we’ve done all we can to clear it out and guard the most likely buildings, so it’s as safe as it’s going to be until we catch this bastard. In the meantime, there’s nothing else you can do here—and we still have all those files to go through.”

  “You’re probably right.” Miranda knew he was, but she was finding it difficult to turn her back on this poor girl and walk away.

  Jaylene said, “When do the reinforcements arrive?”

  “Anytime now.” She pulled out her cell phone to check for a signal. “I’ll get an ETA. Why don’t you two get back to the command center and get started on the files? I’ll catch a ride with the sheriff.”

  Without commenting that the sheriff was likely to remain here awhile, Tony merely said, “Watch your back,” then turned and followed Jaylene toward the lone remaining SUV.

  Watch your back.

  She could feel it too, in the very air around them, a skin-prickling sense of danger, of threat. Her training told her at least part of it was psychological; knowing a sniper was still out there, capable of shooting someone in the head from more than a hundred yards away, was hardly something easily forgotten or even pushed aside.

  But there was more to it than that. Despite the shield that guarded her mind, her innermost self, Miranda had the uneasy feeling that there was a chink somewhere in her armor and that the enemy knew it.

  She shook her head finally, acknowledging to herself that they were—that she was—doing everything possible to protect themselves; there was nothing else to be done except get on with the job. She returned her attention to the cell phone, realizing that she had accidentally brushed a thumb against the wrong touch key—which wasn’t so unusual with the sophisticated little unit—and had called up the phone’s photo in-box.

  She found herself staring down at a brightly colored photo on the cell’s screen: a shot of Diana as she had lain bleeding not so many blocks from where Miranda stood.

  She looked at it for several heartbeats, then very deliberately deleted the picture, wishing it was as easy to remove it from her memory. She returned to the call screen, only to discover there wasn’t even a single bar indicating minimum signal strength.

  Sighing, Miranda returned the cell to its specially designed case on her belt, then touched the tiny device hidden in her ear. “Gabe?”

  Static.

  She estimated she was no more than two miles from the command center, probably less. Far enough, obviously, to have lost the shaky reception they had nearer the center of town. Whether by accident or design, Serenade appeared to be the ultimate communication dead zone.

  Now there’s a phrase.

  Trusting that Gabriel was keeping an eye on this area as per orders, Miranda dismissed the lack of communication as something beyond her control for now and turned her attention to Sheriff Duncan.

  “Des?”

  “This is gonna kill her mother. I told you about her mother, didn’t I?”

  “Yes, you did.” He had rambled on a great deal during the last frantic hours of searching for his young deputy, so Miranda knew that Bobbie Silvers had lived with her widowed mother in a small house on the opposite side of town, only the two of them left of the family since Bobbie’s father had died years before.

  “I just… I don’t understand. She was a sweet kid. Who’d want to hurt her like this?” He looked years older than he had only days before, deep lines in his face and his eyes red-rimmed and haunted. He gestured toward the body, exposed enough so they could all see some of the numerous cuts and deep slashes that had undoubtedly killed her.

  Miranda drew a breath and let it out slowly. “I don’t know if it’s better or worse to say that to him she wasn’t a person. Wasn’t a girl who lived with her ailing mother, a girl who worked hard because she wanted to be a cop. To him, she was only… a thing. Maybe just an experiment in how long it might take someone to bleed to death.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  She put a hand on his arm. “Des, let the others take care of her now. You know they’ll treat her with respect.”

  “I don’t want to just… leave her.”

  “I know. But there’s something you and I have to do, and it’s best done as soon as possible, before the media or helpful neighbors or anyone else beats us to it.”

  Duncan looked at her, his eyes full of dread.

  Miranda nodded. “We have to tell her mother.”

  Sixteen

  DIANA DIDN’T KNOW how much time passed while she sat, frozen, on the bench staring at a gray and lifeless Main Street, but she did know the rest had done her little good. It was still a bit difficult to breathe, and she still felt overwhelmingly exhausted.

  Brooke had remained close but said nothing, merely waiting for… whatever. Diana had no idea what that might be, until she noticed that Brooke’s gaze had focused across the street.

  Looking herself, Diana saw the fake Quentin. Going from door to door, trying the handles, opening the doors when he could, only to retreat and continue on down the street.

  “What’s he doing?” Diana asked.

  Brooke looked at her, silent.

  Sighing, Diana thought it over for herself, since that was clearly what Brooke expected. She watched the fake Quentin trying door after door, peering into windows—and suddenly she got it.

  “He’s looking for the door. The one out of here.” She frowned. “Doesn’t he know that it’s only a literal door if that’s the way it’s made, to be something different, something out of place, so it sticks out?”

  “He will if you say it any louder,” Brooke murmured.

  “Oh.” Diana watched him for a while longer as he worked his way down the street. “Has he been trying doors in the gray time since he got here?”

  “I expect so. He wants out, remember?”

  Diana had been trying not to think about that, but knew she couldn’t ignore it forever. Holding her voice very steady, she said, “If I… choose to move on… if there’s nobody left here to make a door for him to leave, will he remain trapped here?”

  “Would you do that?”

  Quentin.

  “I don’t know,” Diana said honestly. “I’d like to think I would. That I’d pay whatever price I had to in order to keep a monster like him trapped where he can’t hurt anyone else. But…”

  Brooke watched her for a moment, then said, “You aren’t the only medium who can walk in the gray time, Diana. So your sacrifice would most likely be wasted. Sooner or later, someone will make a door. The only question is whether he’s able to last until then.”

  Diana frowned, her relief passing quickly when she reminded herself that she, too, appeared to be trapped here. “Once before, we managed to… shove something evil through a doorway and beyond. No
t back into the living world, but out of the gray time.* To a place where it could never return from.”

  “Yes. Using spiritual energy. A lot of energy that had been building for a very long time. I don’t believe that’s an option in this case.”

  “Then what am I supposed to do?”

  “That’s your choice, Diana.”

  She put her head in her hands and counted silently to ten. When she raised her head, Brooke was gone.

  Oh, shit.

  Without the guide’s presence, frustrating though it often was, Diana felt very, very alone. Except that she wasn’t alone. She had to lean forward and stare hard to find the fake Quentin; as she watched, he reached the last building of the downtown area on that side of the street, tried its door, and peered in the front window, and then he crossed the street to Diana’s side and began working his way toward her.

  She was reasonably sure he wasn’t going to find the door he searched for. What she wasn’t at all sure of was what she could do to keep him trapped here until all his energy, his very essence, was drained away or pulled apart and he was no longer a threat.

  She had the icy feeling that even if she did manage to find a way to hold him here for a while, her own energy would be drained a long time before his was.

  She didn’t know what to do. What she could do. And she was so tired.

  And alone.

  The thought had barely surfaced in her mind when she felt the grip of Quentin’s hand on hers, so strongly that she looked at her hand fully expecting to see his. It wasn’t there. Of course. But, faintly…

  Hold on, Diana, Don’t leave me.

  “I’m trying not to,” she whispered.

  “They took her off the ventilator a couple of hours ago,” Quentin told Hollis and DeMarco. “She’s breathing on her own.”