by Jody Klaire
The women looked at him adoringly, a real man.
He loved it. “I think we should go and demand the sheriff do his duty.”
“You should,” Marie said. “Hal would have if he was sheriff.”
Grace didn’t look as convinced as Brad wanted. She needed to understand who was in charge now. “You girls will come too. You will, won’t you . . . Gracie.”
He knew his tone made her shiver. He loved the fact that she was so easily dominated.
“Let’s go, girls,” he said, getting off his stool and gripping her tight enough that she wouldn’t run. “Let’s go see that idiot McKinley and put him in his place.”
Grace squirmed a bit and Brad gripped her harder, making her squeal. The feeling of power made him laugh out loud, this was going to be good.
Chapter 24
MCKINLEY AND I entered a scene of pure panic. The staff, volunteers, and those rescued had bunched up together in the hotel lobby for safety and support. The seats all faced outward like they had circled the wagons. A few volunteers had unearthed their shotguns and stood guard over those who were lying on beds in the center.
I’d expected them to do the opposite as I figured most folks in the face of a threat would hide behind locked doors and take care of their own.
Here, it was different and they seemed to take comfort from helping each other and reassuring those who were gripped by the deepening fear. Even in the darkness, there was light. I guessed that maybe in the aftermath of the avalanche a lot had changed in their hearts. They had faced the might of Mother Nature and it had banded them together pretty good.
“Where is Betty?” McKinley asked as a sniffling woman hurried over to us.
“Second floor,” she said. “We moved the shooting victim up there to keep him away from the gawkers.”
“I didn’t figure you folks as that kind,” I said. None of those huddled in the center seemed like the kinda people who reveled in others misfortune.
“We aren’t,” the woman confirmed. “But some of the tourists . . . and certain people,” she scowled, “were treating him like entertainment.”
“Brad Jewel,” McKinley and I said in unison.
A short ride in the elevator and we got to the door. McKinley barred entry. “Ladies, if you will stay out here. I want to keep this scene as clean as possible.”
He went inside and I turned to the woman. If I couldn’t go in, least I could do was ask questions. “Is the man in there too?”
The woman shook her head.
“So you found Betty and the doctor in the room?”
“Yes.” Her grief was only held in check by her shock. Some folks took a while to register the effects of trauma. “They were . . . a mess.”
I patted her arm to comfort her. In my mind, I was solely focused on her pain. I didn’t realize that I was actually touching her and getting no visions for a couple of minutes. Go figure.
“We’ll find him,” I told her, trying to concentrate on reassuring her. I went to ask her name but it flashed across my consciousness. “Rebecca, you and the others downstairs. You’re gonna be just fine.” I had no idea where the confidence came from. “The sheriff . . . I . . . we’ll find him.”
As I said the words, her shock lowered its shield and allowed the grief to come gushing through. She launched herself into my arms and dissolved into tears, her sobs shuddering from her. Renee always calmed when I hugged her back so I did the same with Rebecca. Physical comfort wasn’t a strength of mine.
“Aeron?” McKinley poked his head around the door. He took one look at me and Rebecca and his panic bubbled like a pot on a stove. It made me smile. A lot of the guys I knew had the same reaction to a wailing woman . . . run.
“What did you find?” I asked, handing Rebecca to another lady who’d no doubt come to investigate the noise.
“A mess,” he whispered, waiting for them to head around the corner. “But you think it could be this man your friend shot. So, I’m guessing that you know more about him than I do.”
I didn’t know nothing. He was as much a stranger to me as he was to everybody else in St. Jude’s.
“Yannick Boucher,” Charlie said from behind me.
Yannick? It sure as shoots didn’t sound American. It sounded French or one of them other European countries but then I guessed Aeron didn’t exactly bring up visions of Miss America neither.
“James,” Charlie said, heading past us into the room. “We need to get everyone inside. Lock the doors.”
I looked back through the open doorway down the corridor. The atmosphere was changing, the room de-saturating all around me.
It meant someone bad, like Sam, was lurking. My heart pounded in response.
People did three things when it came to the world around them in my experience. There were people who sucked the color out of everything. They were rare but like a swirling vortex of dark and everything around them got tainted, robbed of the beauty until all that could be seen was grey and cold. Sam had been one of those people. He had done so much damage.
Then some folks didn’t really effect anything all that much. They were more balanced, sometimes giving and sometimes taking. Most of the people I met were like that. They just ambled through their daily lives, sometimes making a difference, sometimes not so much.
Then there were special people. People who went above and beyond, who shone and brightened up the place, beaming warmth, light, and love. They filled the world with color and hope. Renee was one of those people to me. She filled my life with color.
“Let’s just take this logically,” McKinley said, drawing me back from my musing. “What makes you think that this man is Yannick . . . whatever-his-name-is?”
Charlie looked at me and I could see that he must have used the cell.
“There’s reinforcements coming, James. They are stuck a little ways down the mountain on the bends.” He turned to me. “Where the avalanche was, the road curls around in layers . . . half the damn thing dropped . . . they are clearing it as fast as they can.”
“What about flying, choppers maybe?”
Charlie and McKinley shook their heads.
“Weather is too bad for a plane and they tried the choppers but visibility is just too bad.” Charlie sighed. “The layout of the mountain, the trees, the snow, it just can’t be done.”
Well, there went my idea of CIG. I had visions of them rappelling down like in the movies, guns loaded and ready with those shiny red beams glinting through the darkness. It was disappointing. Frei would have looked cool in black leather.
“Look,” McKinley said. “How can we be sure that it is this Yannick?”
Charlie shut the door. I tried to ignore the carnage all around us. Blood coated pretty much everything and the screaming horror of the scene made my vision fade in and out.
“Aeron’s boss said so,” Charlie said, touching my shoulder to focus me. “James, we have to let Commander Renee Black—Serena’s real name—loose and get everyone to safety.”
“I’m doing no such thing,” McKinley said. He folded his arms and I was sure he would stamp his feet at any second. The devastation around us filled the air until I swore that I was breathing in tension. “One, how did you learn this information, Charlie?”
I watched as Charlie flicked his gaze from McKinley’s stare. I guessed that Lilia or Frei had given him the secrecy first speech.
“And two,” McKinley continued. “Commander Black? Come on.”
“She is,” I piped up, meeting his glare. “We need her help.”
“I’m not buying it.” He ran his free hand over his stomach. A comfort gesture if I’d ever seen one. If he didn’t believe it was true, it weren’t, right? “What’s so special about this suspect that I need to let loose a woman who shot him in the street?”
“Yannick Boucher. The Guillotine Killer. Do you remember the news?” Charlie scratched the back of his neck and I shivered at the way his fear wriggled up from below. “Guy in France . . . he went cr
azy . . . took a load of hostages?”
McKinley looked about as clueless as I was and Charlie sighed.
“It was all over the news. The guy beheaded the victims, left them all around the country . . . Then they discover he was here, right here under our noses. Took them a year to find him.”
The nausea rolled in my stomach, the air too thick with death and panic. I wanted to crawl out of the window or cry in a corner. I wasn’t sure how to keep a handle on my own emotions and it made me feel even more wobbly.
“People?” I asked, my voice sounded squeaky.
Charlie swallowed so hard that I could see his Adam’s apple jump. “Men . . . women.”
The three of us stared into the space between us.
“Wish your friend had hit him in the head.”
“If it is him,” McKinley said, determined to deny everything. “And that begs the question why your friend, if she is some fabled commander, why she didn’t shoot to kill?”
“I can’t say.” What was I, a mind reader? “Unless I can get her to talk, I won’t neither.”
“I was told that we needed to get people indoors, that we needed to secure the town.” Charlie looked at me. “Thing is, where do we start? How do we know we aren’t just shutting him in with anyone?”
“Did Lil—I mean my . . . er . . . boss say what he might want?”
Charlie’s Adam’s apple once again flexed. “I think her exact words were indiscriminate violence.”
Oh boy. That sounded like Sam . . . and then some.
“Okay, let’s just say that it is him. Why is Yannick here in St. Jude’s?” McKinley asked.
I wanted to know the answer to that too. What would drive him here? Had Renee recognized his face? Is that why she’d opened fire? If so, why did that result in her getting locked in her mind?
“Sheriff,” I said. “Renee has gone into lockdown for a reason. If this guy is as bad as we think, I need to see what happened for myself . . . I could pinpoint him.”
“How?”
I took a deep breath. He already knew some of it, what was the harm in him knowing more, right?
“See, that’s my job,” I told him. “But I need your hands to do it . . . Charlie first.”
“Our hands?” Charlie asked, looking down at his mitts.
I walked to him and motioned for him to hold them out. There was no way I could risk a fit and an idea popped into my head. I placed my hands over his, not quite touching but enough to feel the heat from his skin. A flashed image played before my eyes.
“You went to a briefing . . . before the avalanche . . . it was on him.”
“Yeah,” he mumbled. “How—?”
“They thought he could be in the area.” I saw one of the CIG team heading up the briefing in the guise of an FBI agent and that meant the CIG must have known about Yannick. The avalanche played out and I sighed. “The wanted posters are still in your truck.”
Charlie slumped his shoulders. “Could have saved us a whole lot of trouble.” His eyes traveled in the direction of the mess on the bed, the mess I was avoiding even glancing at. “The doc . . . Betty—”
“Don’t,” I told him, feeling his guilt. “It won’t change a thing . . . you didn’t do this.”
Focusing on the energy radiating up from his pores, I saw him arguing with Joyce. She was begging him, she’d seen the incident.
“You saw a flash but you didn’t see Yannick’s face or you would have remembered.” The vision continued, Simon in front of him trying to help Renee up the steps, brick dust covered his collar.
“Wondered where it came from,” Charlie said as if he were replaying the memory at the same time. “Wish I’d damn noticed.”
“You have a concussion,” I told him. “You lied to the doctor.”
Charlie shrugged. We both knew why he’d done it. Neither he or McKinley trusted Hal to be able to cope with refugees from the avalanche.
I flinched as the gunshots sounded in my ears. I replayed the part over and over. “Yannick fired but her shot hit him in the arm before he did . . . it would have been pretty much point blank otherwise.”
My head ached with that thought. Thank cotton, Renee was a great shot with great reactions. I turned to McKinley and pointed at his hands. “You next.”
He froze. His fear rumbled over his head like thunder, swirling its way inside his logic and attempting to skew it.
“I won’t harm you. I ain’t even touching you.” I stepped closer and looked into his eyes, hoping that he would see the truth in mine. “What I removed has gone. I would never do that to you.”
He nodded and the cloud over him lifted. “Guess if it helps.”
His hands pulsed with heat, the visions harder to control. James McKinley had a lot of mixed emotions, events marred by his own fear, his own heartbreak took a while to straighten out. He had been in the station, stewing over the fact that he’d heard Grace talking about how wonderful Brad Jewel was. When the avalanche hit, he hadn’t cared if he survived. I skipped forward to the shooting.
“You turned when she called you,” I said. “You saw his face.”
My heart thudded like a slow clap, building in momentum as I focused as hard as I could on the building scene in front of me, on Yannick’s face, on his mouth.
“He called her somethin’,” I said, frowning. “What was it?”
Renee called out, she was flustered, terrified, she needed to tell him something. Yannick barged past Martha, he sneered.
“Hey, Ice Queen . . . where’s your knight?” Brad’s voice off to the side. Renee wasn’t listening.
Yannick stepped closer, a sneer, his eyes hollow, glinting. His mouth opened. He was speaking French.
French but for one word. “Tess.”
Tess.
The sound of the name drained the color from Renee’s face. Her eyes widened with fear. Her body rigid, she turned and fired.
“Tess,” I whispered out loud. “He called her Tess.”
“What does that mean?” McKinley asked as I pulled my hands away.
I walked to the window, still thinking about wrenching it open in a desperate bid to escape. I searched through my own memories. When I met Renee, she had been someone else, she had been in her psychiatrist’s role. She had been sent there to watch me, I had been her POI back then and I had terrified her.
“So who are you?” she asked.
I tried not to roll my eyes, if in doubt switch the question. “Aeron Lorelei . . . but then I thought you’d read it on the notes.”
“Is this the way it’s going to be, Aeron?” she asked, using my first name. You’re definitely irritating them when first names are used.
“That depends on you, Tess.” I shot back.
She froze—
Then later, we had been through so much, trapped in Nan’s cabin as we waited for the waters to recede. Renee had been pent up to the point of popping, near enough hysterical at times.
Renee muttered and then sat in a heap on the floor. “Four walls drive me crazy.”
I asked what happened, why she was afraid. She alluded to the fact some folk didn’t take kindly to her covert protection.
“But they don’t know where you are . . . the people you’ve dealt with before . . . do they?”
Renee opened the bag and pulled out a very sleek, matte black gun. “No, no one even knows my real name.”
I looked down at the gun. “The fact I do is a problem?”
She met my eyes and then looked away. “You don’t know my name. It’s buried beneath every layer I have.”
“Renee Black . . . Colonel Charles Black’s daughter.”
Lucky for me, she didn’t shoot me but instead explained her worries. I’d asked about the name.
“And Tess?”
Renee looked up and smiled. “You quoted me the background of my last job . . . I was Tess, then Tess became Serena’s sister . . . It’s how I keep track.”
I stared out at the blue-tinted snow. The sky abov
e a blanket of twinkling stars. It was so peaceful, so calm but he was out there somewhere. There was a big bank of snow clouds rolling in. More snow. Snow that had trapped us here.
Renee had been so scared, so on edge, terrified that her past could hurt me. The realization hit hard. Renee, she had been there, she had lived through it. She knew him.
“When did you say Yannick was active last?”
“Two, maybe three years ago,” Charlie answered.
It fit. Renee had come to the institution not long after.
“Scars take time to heal and sometimes even then, they still show,” she had told me.
“My mother said you had scars.”
Renee nodded. “Can I just say that I know what you’re going through and I’m going to be there every step of the way?”
Scars, scars so deep, a place so dark that Nan wasn’t sure if I would follow. Survivor’s scars.
“Evan told me that Yannick had been asking questions about Renee,” I said. “I thought he’d said Serena but he didn’t. He didn’t mention a name.”
I spun around and marched to the bed. There was a watch on the floor. I bent down and picked it up. The blood coated my fingertips.
“This is for you, Tess . . . Everyone will pay until you stop running . . . I own you. I will take away these unworthy cretins from you . . . you will learn your lesson . . . You. Are. Mine.”
My body jolted. The watch hit the floor. I was sprinting down the hallway, McKinley and Charlie in pursuit. “Charlie, go to Martha and Earl’s . . . protect Zack . . . please . . . don’t let him near Zack.”
“Sure . . . What did you see?”
I was in the lobby, searching around. I headed to the reception and rifled through the doctor’s bag. “He still has the scalpel,” I told McKinley. “It’s missing.”
“Aeron,” McKinley said. “Calm down . . . You’re scaring people.”
“He targets the people she loves. That’s why he was in Colorado . . . He was after her mother.” My breath was in gasps and I was sure I was close to hyperventilating. I prayed her mom was safe. “Zack . . . if he watched us . . . if he saw us . . . Zack.”
