Out of the Shadows tbscus-3

by Кей Хупер

  "You risked your life to try to shut me out." He had to say it.

  "No. I told you I could handle the energy buildup."

  "We both know it wasn't as simple as that. You could have destroyed yourself, Miranda. If that desperate spirit hadn't taken the decision out of your hands by attacking you, how long would you have let it go on? The pain, shutting off your extra senses, losing all your defenses. Sooner or later it could have killed you — or caused you to be killed."

  Miranda shook her head slightly, more in resistance than disagreement, but she didn't protest aloud.

  "Was it worth that to you?" It was something else he had to say, to ask. "Would you have rather died than let me get close again?"

  "When it started ... I thought so."

  Bishop thought he probably deserved the jolt of pain he felt, but that didn't make it any easier to take. "I see."

  Her smile was rueful. "I was angry, Bishop, even after all those years. Not because of what happened with my family. Bonnie was right, I never really blamed you for that. You were doing your job, doing everything in your power to stop a vicious killer. But I did blame you for ... leaving me alone to cope with the aftermath."

  "Miranda — "

  "Oh, I know. I was the one who left in a physical sense. But I wouldn't have done that if you hadn't already drawn away."

  "I felt guilty as hell, first about going behind your back to Kara and then about what happened to her and your parents."

  "And you didn't want to feel my pain and guilt added to your own. I knew that. But it didn't help. You closed yourself off from me just when I needed you most."

  Bishop wanted to tell her he was sorry. But what words were there to apologize for turning away from the woman he loved and allowing her to suffer alone and rebuild her life without his help or comfort? What possible words could he offer now?

  Miranda didn't appear to expect any, and went on in a matter-of-fact tone. "So, yes, I would have done just about anything to shut you out when you came back into my life. Even though I knew it was inevitable we'd be lovers again."

  She drew a breath and let it out slowly. "I saw a series of events culminating in something else I wanted to avoid, but it's all happening. Every action I take, every choice and decision I make, just brings me closer to that future I saw. It's unavoidable."

  "What future, Miranda? What did you see?"

  "What's the use of knowing? You can't change it."

  "Goddammit, tell me."

  She left the window finally, crossing the space between them to stand almost between his knees. She lifted her hands and touched him, and with that contact the door that had shut him out quietly opened. "I die," Miranda said steadily. "I'm the killer's final victim."

  As it turned out, the roaring storm made the little girls too jittery to be much interested in games, so Bonnie and Seth made a quick trip to the clinic's video library and returned with several tapes. It took only a few minutes to get the girls settled with snacks and the video they had chosen.

  Under his breath, Seth murmured, "We don't have to sit and watch this, do we? I hate it when Bambi's mother — "

  Bonnie made a hasty gesture to silence him, then drew him away from the two absorbed girls to the small seating area near the door. "I'd rather not leave them alone with the storm so wild," she said, "but we don't have to watch the movie."

  "In that case, I'm glad we got the games. What do you feel like?" He bent down to sort through the boxes stacked on the coffee table. "Trivial Pursuit? Clue? I don't think we want Candyland, but what about Mah-Jongg? Or here's one with chess and checkers and — Hey. I must have grabbed this one by mistake when I went in to put it back on the shelf."

  Bonnie stared at the Ouija board in his hand. "Did you?"

  "I guess so."

  "Seth ... do you mind taking it back to the storage room?"

  He looked at her gravely. "I wasn't going to suggest—"

  "I know. I'd just feel more . . . comfortable if that board was somewhere else."

  "But—"

  "It's a doorway, Seth. I just don't want to be even unconsciously tempted to open it again, that's all."

  "Would you be? Tempted, I mean."

  "Yes. Because if that was Lynet we reached before, she might be able to tell us who her killer was. That answer would be worth opening the door — if I was sure I could control it afterward. But I'm not sure. I don't have enough experience to be sure."

  "You opened it once before," Seth said, slowly enough to make his own doubts about the reality of that obvious.

  "Yes. But Randy reminded me of just how dangerous it is to do that, and I promised her I wouldn't try again."

  Seth opened his mouth, then closed it, hesitated, and shrugged. "Sure, I'll put it back."

  "Thanks."

  "Don't go anywhere while I'm gone."

  Bonnie smiled. "No, I won't. I'll set up one of the other games so we can play."

  "Good enough." Seth didn't exactly hurry as he left the room, but he didn't dawdle either. He strode down the hall to the storage room, and was careful to put the Ouija board on the highest shelf and shove it far back, so that no part of it hung out over the edge.

  He came out and shut the door, absently jiggling the knob to be sure it was firmly closed. It was only when he took a step away that he heard it again.

  The whispering.

  Seth eased back to the door and pressed his ear against it, listening. He could hear it clearly, a muffled rustling sound that was like a voice or voices whispering rapidly, almost rhythmically.

  It made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

  Seth hesitated, then reached for the knob and turned it slowly. The whispering continued. He jerked the door open.

  Silence.

  And a perfectly ordinary storage room, the Ouija board high on its shelf just as Seth had left it.

  He waited a moment, heard nothing but the muted sounds of the storm, and closed the door. Still nothing. Whatever had made the whispering noise was silent now.

  "Daniels, you're really losing it," he told himself out loud. But when he went back to Bonnie, he hurried..

  EIGHTEEN

  "No," Bishop said.

  But he saw it now, the vision she had seen months ago, a rushing kaleidoscope of images and emotions and certainties. He saw the bodies discovered one by one, unable to see who they were but knowing what was missing from each: the blood, the organs. He knew as she had known that there would be five victims, the fifth one different from the others — and that after the fifth murder but not before, he and Miranda would become lovers and would restore the intense psychic connection they had once shared.

  And after that, soon after that, the end would come with little warning. The images showed him what Miranda had seen from her perspective, a hazy background but Bonnie in clear danger, a hand pointing a gun at Miranda. And as she reached for her own gun, a shot echoing hollowly, the brutal shock of pain — and the utter certainty of death. Then, nothing.

  Permeating all the rest, infusing every event throughout the vision, was another absolute certainty, a conviction so powerful there was simply no room for doubt. Bishop would save Bonnie. Without him, she would die as well. Miranda knew that, had known it all along. It was why she had contacted the FBI for help, knowing he would come.

  "No," Bishop said again. He realized his eyes were closed, and opened them to find her watching him gravely. For the first time, he wished violently that their connection didn't allow him to see everything she had seen.

  "You said once you'd take care of Bonnie if anything happened to me. I'm depending on you for that."

  He didn't remember putting his arms around her, but now they held her tighter. "Nothing is going to happen to you. You are not going to die, Miranda. Not here, not now. Not for a long, long time."

  As if she hadn't heard him, she said, "Bonnie's too young to go on by herself. She'll need someone. You'll be there for her, won't you, Bishop?"

  He was
unable to ignore that appeal. "You don't have to worry about Bonnie. I swear to you, I'll take care of her. But this bastard is not going to kill you, Miranda."

  She didn't reply to that but kissed him instead, and despite every other emotion crowded inside him, Bishop felt desire escalate so sharply that it threatened to push aside everything else. It had always been that way between them. The hunger was instant and total, and very little short of his fear for her could have kept him from responding wholeheartedly.

  You're trying to distract me.

  Would I do that?

  He groaned and pulled back just far enough to make her look at him. "I'm not going to lose you again. Do you hear me? If I have to lock you in your own jail to keep you safe, then that's what I'll do."

  Miranda smiled faintly. "No, you won't. Because you believe what I believe. The best way to deal with a vision is to make the logical decisions and choices as they come up, to stay where you are and go on with your life, and keep an eye out for warning signs. Do something drastic to change fate, and you always end up with a worse outcome than the one you originally saw."

  "Worse than you being dead? I'll take that chance."

  "But I won't." She stroked his cheek with a surprisingly gentle touch.

  "Listen to me, and stop being such a goddamned fatalist. You told me years ago that your visions didn't always come true, didn't always happen the way you saw them."

  "Yes. But so far this one has. There's no reason to expect the end to be different."

  "There's a very good reason. Me. Where the hell was I in that scene? Because if you think I'll let you out of my sight until this is over, think again."

  With a little chuckle, she said, "I wouldn't expect anything else. But you do realize, I hope, that we can't sleep together again in the meantime?"

  Belatedly, he did realize that. "We can't take the chance of being without our abilities just when they're needed."

  "It probably wouldn't be wise. We had an excuse last night, but not now. It may well be that the only edge we have is the psychic one."

  Bishop eyed the white hurricane still going strong outside the window and wasn't all that surprised that he'd been completely unconscious of it for the last little while. "Nothing's likely to happen while it's storming," he pointed out, not really arguing.

  "Not likely. Not impossible." She linked her fingers together behind his neck. "Better to be safe than sorry, especially with a killer on the loose."

  As badly as he wanted her, Bishop wasn't about to do anything that might put Miranda at greater risk; whether or not she had seen the actual future in that chilling scene, it was a foregone conclusion that both she and Bonnie were at risk, and he wanted all his senses at full strength. No matter what it cost him.

  He kissed her, forcing himself to keep it brief. "This is going to be something we'll have to deal with in the future, you know. Maybe we'd better talk about it now and decide how we want to handle it. I mean, I have no intention of putting our love life on hold indefinitely just because we're both likely to be chasing after killers and other criminals most of the time. There is such a thing as sacrificing a little too much for king and country, so to speak."

  Her smile wavered for just an instant, but her voice was calm when she said, "Why don't we talk about that later?"

  "There will be a later, Miranda."

  She nodded. "I'll try to stop being such a fatalist and think positively, okay?"

  "That's all I ask. Well — that and one more thing. Stop calling me Bishop."

  "I've always called you Bishop."

  "I know."

  "When we first met, you told me that everybody did. Except for your best friend from college, not a soul alive called you Noah. At least, not more than once."

  He grimaced. "That was real subtle of me, wasn't it?"

  "Let's just say I got the point. Would you like me to profile you now? Explain how being known only by your surname was one of the ways you used to keep people at a distance? Even lovers?"

  "All right, all right. But the point is, I'm very different now and I don't want you at a distance. In any way, but especially emotionally and telepathically."

  "You do recall there's a price to pay for that sort of closeness? If I should have another vision—"

  "I'll have it too. Yeah, I know. They hurt, as I recall."

  "That's still the same, I'm afraid, Like a blinding migraine, though thankfully lasting only a minute or so."

  "Now that you're no longer working so hard to shut me out, is another vision likely? You told Tony right after we arrived that you'd more or less burned out on the precognition."

  "Lied."

  Bishop winced. "And even years ago, once we were linked, you said the visions were more . . . intense."

  "Uh-huh. And you're much stronger now than you were then as a telepath. So with your energy added to mine, we'll probably blow the top off that scale you guys developed at Quantico to measure these things."

  He knew that was quite likely true. There had been so much going on the summer they had first become lovers, both around them and between them, that exploring the limits of what was psychically possible with their connection had not been uppermost in their minds. But what they had discovered in due course was that they shared each other's abilities even when apart, and that when they were in physical contact, the energy of each enhanced the energy and abilities of the other.

  They had found out quite by accident that if they were holding hands or otherwise in physical contact and either of them touched someone whom neither had been able to read alone, they were sometimes able to read that person. Not always — but often enough to, as Miranda had put it, shift their combined range well over into the FM scale.

  It made them, quite simply, more than twice as powerful together than either was alone.

  Following his thoughts easily, Miranda said, "We're an odd pair, there's no question about that."

  "I choose to think of us as unique, not odd." He drew her a bit closer, smiling. "And you never said you'd stop calling me Bishop."

  "I didn't, did I?"

  "Miranda."

  She chuckled. "Well, it'll take some getting used to. You've always been Bishop." Even in my mind. Her mouth brushed his, then lingered. "But I'll work on it... Noah."

  For a while, Bishop forgot everything except the aching pleasure of being physically close to her. Holding her and touching her, their mouths hungry, bodies straining to be closer despite the clothing and the necessity keeping them apart.

  "Wow," Miranda murmured at last, her eyes darkened, heavy lidded, and sensual.

  Bishop's arms tightened for just a moment, then he eased her away from him. In a hoarse voice he said, "Much more of this and I won't have any wits left to focus on trying to catch our killer. Jesus, Miranda."

  "They say self-denial is good for the soul."

  "Yeah, and I'll bet the ones saying it didn't have anything they hated giving up."

  Miranda smiled, but said, "Maybe we'd better concentrate on work for a while. Storm or no storm."

  "Maybe we'd better," he agreed. "We can try one more time to put the pieces of the puzzle together."

  Monday, January 17

  Amy Fowler opened her eyes and gazed blearily at the ceiling. Same ceiling. Same stupid, dull ceiling, industrial gray squares pockmarked with tiny black specks. She was really, really tired of looking at that ceiling.

  At least the wind had stopped howling like something trapped alive, and sleet no longer pelted the window panes in that unceasing, unsettling rattle. The storm was finally over.

  The sedatives had blurred time somewhat for Amy, but she thought it was probably Monday morning; the light coming from the single window in the room was very bright, sunshine reflecting off lots and lots of snow.

  Two days. They'd found Steve's body just two days ago.

  Under the covers, her hands crept down to cover her lower abdomen, and tears welled up in her eyes. Steve was gone. Steve was gone, and a baby
was coming, and Amy was so scared. She wanted to just go back to sleep, not to think about it anymore, but Dr. Daniels had told her gravely last night that there wouldn't be any more drugs, that she had to face things.

  Face things. Face her mom and dad. Face the pity of her friends at school, while her belly got big and she went every Sunday to put flowers on Steve's grave.

  Oh, God.

  "Amy?" Bonnie came into the room, her expression wavering between worry and hope. "Dr. Daniels says you should eat something. One of the nurses is going to bring you a tray in a few minutes."

  "I don't care," Amy murmured, honestly indifferent. She found the bed's controls and pressed the button to raise the head several inches.

  Bonnie sat in the chair beside the bed. "A snowplow went past a little while ago, so the roads are being cleared. I think . . . your mom wants to come take you home now that the storm is over."

  "I guess there's no school," Amy said.

  "No. Probably not tomorrow either."

  Amy pleated the sheet between her fingers. "But sooner or later. And everybody'll know."

  Reasonably but not without sympathy, Bonnie said, "It isn't something you can hide for long. But you have choices, options. And you aren't alone, don't forget that."

  "My dad's going to kill me."

  "You know he won't."

  Amy looked at her best friend and felt a little resentful. "I don't know that. All I know is that Steve is dead and he left me with a baby."

  Bonnie didn't argue or point out that Amy had also helped create that baby. She merely said, "I'm sure if he'd been given a choice, he'd be here with you now."

  "So I should be happy he would have chosen fatherhood over death? Great, that's just great."

  "Amy, that isn't what I meant. I'm just saying that you can't blame Steve for not being here."

  "You want to bet?" Amy laughed, vaguely aware that there was a shrill edge to the sound. "He couldn't leave well enough alone, that's what the problem was. That's what got him killed. He was always pushing, always going just that inch farther than he should have."