by Kay Hooper
“Sam—”
“I’ll be fine, Luke.”
“Will you?” He grasped the hand holding the handkerchief and drew it back so they could all see the scarlet blood. “Will you?”
She looked at the handkerchief, then up at him, saying only, “Has it stopped?”
She had the darkest eyes he’d ever known, unfathomable eyes. He wondered just how much she had not told them. He also wondered why he was so hesitant to press her in order to find out.
And it was Jaylene who answered her finally, saying, “Looks like it. Sam, I don’t have to be a doctor to guess that nosebleeds triggered by a vision aren’t a good sign.” She considered, adding, “If you’ll forgive the pun.”
Samantha waited until Lucas released her hand, then refolded the handkerchief again and dabbed at her nose to wipe away the last of the blood. “I’ll be fine,” she repeated.
Lucas moved away far enough to rest a hip on the conference table, and said, “It’s happened before, hasn’t it? Earlier today?”
“Yeah, so?”
“Jaylene’s right, Sam. It is a sign.” He tried to control his voice but knew it emerged harshly. “A sign that you’re pushing yourself too hard. The last psychic I saw have regular nosebleeds ended up in a coma.”
After a moment, Samantha said, “Twice in one day isn’t regular. It’s . . . an aberration.”
“Jesus, Samantha—”
“I’ll get this laundered and back to you. Good luck in searching Lindsay’s place. Hope you find something. See you later, Jay.”
“Bye, Sam.”
Lucas remained where he was for several moments, then said to his partner, “I’ve never met anybody so goddamned stubborn in my life.”
“Look in the mirror.”
He turned his head to frown at her, but said only, “She needs to be watched, especially tonight while she’s reading. Whatever this bastard’s rules are, I’m willing to bet they don’t include sticking to the timetable we’ve come to expect.”
“No, that would probably be too predictable of him. So you really do believe Sam’s at risk?”
“He knows about her. He maneuvered her here. That means she’s important to him or his game.”
Jaylene nodded. “Agreed. But, Luke, other than Glen Champion—who’s already pulled a couple of double shifts in the last few days—there’s nobody in this department who would willingly guard Sam. And you know as well as I do that unwilling cops can be more dangerous than no cops.”
“I’ll do it.”
Jaylene didn’t ask him how he planned to watch Samantha twenty-four hours a day. Instead, she said, “We’ll get going on canvassing Lindsay’s building and searching the apartment. I’ll call Caitlin Graham and tell her. As a matter of fact, I think I’ll ask Wyatt to assign a couple of deputies to keep an eye on her.”
“Think she might be a target?”
“If he was watching to see who found the pendant, he knows she’s here. Better to be safe.”
“Yeah.”
“The pendant’s on its way to Quantico; maybe they can come up with something useful. In the meantime, we have the photos here, if you want to take another look at it.”
“You didn’t get anything at all from it?”
“No. Maybe because Sam already had.” She shook her head. “I really don’t like to think about this guy being so far ahead of the game that he knew Sam would get her hands on that pendant.”
“Neither do I.”
“Think he’s psychic?”
Lucas frowned. “No. Everything we have so far suggests that he’s maneuvering people, maybe influencing or even creating events, but nothing says he’s anticipating them in any paranormal sense.”
“Then how did he know Sam would touch the pendant?”
“Logically. We’ve agreed he knows about her. That means he knew or could strongly suspect that she’d get involved in the investigation.”
“Especially with you here,” Jaylene murmured.
Lucas ignored that. “Logically, he could assume that sooner or later Sam would be asked to touch any object or evidence we found.”
“Umm. Now tell me how he managed to imprint all that energy, all that fear, on the pendant.”
“I don’t know. Unless . . .”
“Unless?”
“Unless he carried it from the beginning. Unless it was a kind of . . . silent witness to everything he did. All the terror he created. All the pain and suffering. All the death. Nothing Sam described sounded like one of the kidnappings or murders, but maybe she got a glimpse into his soul. Maybe that’s what she saw. Images of terror and death.”
“Christ. No wonder she got a nosebleed. It’s a miracle she didn’t have a heart attack.”
“Yeah.” Lucas straightened and glanced toward the door, his thoughts clearly elsewhere, and his absent voice reflected that when he said, “Call me if the canvass or search of Lindsay’s apartment turns up anything.”
“You don’t expect it to.”
“I think the only thing he left there was what he wanted us to find. The pendant.”
“So who makes the next move?”
“I do.” He walked out of the room.
Gazing after him, Jaylene murmured, “Wrong chessboard, though. Then again . . . maybe not.”
Caitlin didn’t protest when two deputies from the sheriff’s department knocked on the door to her room and announced that they’d be close by, should she need anything. She was somewhat relieved, in fact, since the occasional media person—apologizing profusely for “intruding”—persisted in knocking on her door.
She watched from the window as the cops turned away another one not ten minutes after they arrived, and shook her head as the disappointed young woman took her little cassette recorder and returned to her car.
It made Caitlin feel more than a little queasy. What did they expect from her? A sound bite about grief? How it felt to have a sister murdered? A dramatic direct appeal from her to the killer to give himself up?
Jesus.
She moved away from the window and sat on the bed for a moment staring at the muted news on TV, then rose again, restless but barred from moving very far in any direction. Small motel rooms provided little space and even less interest, she’d decided.
Room with a bed, low dresser with the TV atop one end and a big mirror above the other. Nightstands. A round table with two chairs near the window, so-called reading chair on the other side of the bed near the bathroom. Tiled bathroom, with just enough counter space for the little coffeemaker and maybe a small case of toiletries.
Caitlin knew every corner. She knew one of the chairs at the table sat unevenly on its legs. She knew the right-hand nightstand had a drawer that stuck. Ironically, she thought, the drawer containing the Bible.
She knew the shower nozzle was frozen in position so that it couldn’t be adjusted, that the water stream was just enough underpressured to be an irritant. She knew the towels were rough. She knew the bed sagged.
It was edging into evening on the day of her only sister’s funeral, and Caitlin was alone in a fairly shabby motel room she knew too well in a town she hardly knew at all.
Why had Lindsay chosen this little town in which to live? Because being a cop in a small town was simpler? Because it was easier to be a cop when you recognized most of the faces you saw in the course of your day, when you knew the people you worked to serve and protect?
“I wish I’d asked you, Lindsay,” Caitlin heard herself murmur. “I wish I’d asked you.”
She jumped as the TV suddenly switched channels and came unmuted, the dry dialogue of an old movie filling the silence of the room. Frowning, she got the remote from the nightstand and hit the previous channel and mute buttons.
Silence fell as the TV returned to the earlier settings.
Caitlin sat back down on the bed, sighing. The news was depressing, so an old movie might just as well—
The TV began cycling through its channels, pausing on each
one only a few seconds before going on. The mute function again turned itself off, and the volume rose slightly. An old movie. A sitcom from the seventies. A biography on a long-dead film legend. A science program on dinosaurs. Music videos.
Unnerved, Caitlin quickly reached for the remote and this time turned the set off.
Silence.
But before she could put the remote down again, the set came back on and, again, cycled steadily through its channels.
Caitlin turned it off again, and this time went over to fumble behind the dresser and pull the plug.
As she straightened in the silent room, the lamp on her nightstand flickered, dimmed, then went out. Seconds later, it came back on.
“A problem with the power,” Caitlin said aloud, hearing the relief in her voice. “That’s all it is—”
The phone on the opposite nightstand offered an odd, abbreviated ring. Long moments passed. It rang again, and again the sound was shortened, wrong.
Caitlin chewed on her bottom lip, watching the instrument as one would watch a coiled rattlesnake. When it rang again, she went slowly over and sat on the edge of the bed. Drew a deep breath. And picked up the receiver.
“Hello?”
Silence greeted her. But not an empty silence. Instead, there was a low hiss, the faint crackle of static, and an almost inaudible hum that made Caitlin’s teeth ache.
She hung up quickly and stared at the phone. Weird. But just . . . weird. Uncommon, but not unexplainable. There had been storms recently, and the phone lines were probably old and wonky in a little town like this anyway—
The phone rang again, this time one long, continuous ring.
She stood it as long as she could, then picked up the receiver again. “Hello? Who the hell is—”
“Cait.”
It was almost inaudible, but clear for all of that.
And it was her dead sister’s voice.
“Lindsay?”
“Tell Sam . . . to be careful. He knows. He . . .”
“Lindsay?”
But the voice had faded away. Caitlin sat listening to the weird, hissing silence for a long time before she finally replaced the receiver with a shaking hand.
Despite Samantha’s words to her earlier today, Caitlin had never believed there was anything beyond death.
Until now.
As soon as the shaken client backed out of the booth, Lucas emerged from the curtains behind Samantha to say, “You were too blunt, telling him he wasn’t going to get that promotion.”
“He won’t get it.” Samantha rubbed her temples. “And stop backseat reading, will you?”
“You wouldn’t have been so blunt if he hadn’t been a journalist, that’s all I’m saying.”
“I thought journalists were supposed to be hot after the truth.”
“In a perfect world. These days, it’s mostly being hot after a good story and hang the truth.”
“You’ve gotten more cynical.” She eyed him as he came around her to check the curtained front entrance of the booth. “I can’t imagine why,” she added dryly.
He turned to look at her, saying only, “Nobody waiting at the moment, so it looks like you’ll get at least a short break.”
“I had a break an hour ago when Ellis brought tea,” she reminded him. “Luke, I don’t need a watchdog.”
“The hell you don’t.”
“I don’t, whatever you think. And, besides, it’s distracting to have your cell phone ring from behind me when I’m trying to concentrate.”
“I forgot to set it on vibrate, sorry. Jay was just reporting in on the canvass and search. It’ll take at least another day to talk to everyone in Lindsay’s building, but so far no joy—and they didn’t turn up anything useful in her apartment.”
“Big surprise.”
He sighed. “Well, we had to try.”
Samantha watched him steadily, forcing herself to stop rubbing her temples before he commented on it. “You think the kidnapper will take someone else soon?”
“I think he’ll make some kind of a move. He has to know that the longer he’s active here in Golden, the more time it gives us to find him.” Lucas shrugged. “It’ll take time to check out every property in the area, but it can be done. The town’s small enough that we can probably talk to every household individually, not just the remote ones.”
“And he’s bright enough to know that. He can’t afford to stay here for much longer. So he has to move faster, force your hand.”
“I would, in his place.” He studied her, then said, “I never could get used to talking to you as Zarina. It’s not so much the shawls and turban as it is the makeup. You do a very skillful job of aging yourself.”
“A true glimpse into the future.” She smiled wryly. “It takes less makeup now than it used to, of course.”
“Without the makeup you still look like a teenager.”
“I wasn’t a teenager even when I was one. You know that.”
“I never knew it all, though, did I?”
Samantha wasn’t at all sure she wanted to drift into this territory with Lucas, but the strange and unsettling day seemed to have done something to the guards she normally kept raised solidly between them. Her head throbbed, and she reached up again to briefly rub her temples, hearing herself say, “You didn’t ask. I didn’t think you needed to know.”
He took a step toward her and leaned his hands on the back of the client’s chair. “Would you have told me, if I’d asked?”
“I don’t know. Maybe not. We were sort of busy, if you recall. There wasn’t a lot of time to dredge up the past.”
“Maybe that’s what we should have done. Taken the time to do.”
More than a little surprised, she said, “You were obsessed with the investigation, remember?”
“Missing kids do that to me.”
Again, Samantha was surprised, this time by the defensive tone in his voice. “I wasn’t criticizing. Just stating a fact. Your focus was on the investigation, as it should have been. The timing for anything else was, to say the least, lousy.”
“So I’m forgiven?”
“For what happened during the investigation, there’s nothing to forgive. I’m a big girl, I knew what I was doing. For what happened after . . . Well, let’s just say I learned my lesson.”
“Meaning?”
Samantha was saved from replying when a new client appeared hesitantly in the curtained doorway. Lucas was forced to retreat to the area behind Samantha, and he was clearly not pleased by the interruption.
As for Samantha, she had to mentally prepare herself yet again to read, even as she was automatically beginning her spiel for at least the tenth time that evening.
“What may Madam Zarina see for you on this night?”
The teenage girl sat down in the client’s chair, still looking hesitant, and said, “I’m not here for a reading. Well, not really. I mean, I have this”—she placed her ticket on the satin-covered table—“but I didn’t pay for it. He paid for it.”
Everything in Samantha went still, and she was conscious that, behind her, Luke had frozen as well. Relaxing her voice into its normal tones, she asked, “Who paid for it?”
The girl blinked in surprise at the change, but answered readily, “That guy. I don’t know him. Actually, I couldn’t see his face very well, because he was standing in the shadows near the sharpshooting booth.”
Because she couldn’t help it, Samantha said, “You’re a little old to need to be warned not to speak to strangers. Particularly strange men.”
“Yeah, I thought about that,” she confessed. “After. But, anyway, there were people all around, and he didn’t come near me. He just pointed to the edge of the counter there at the booth, and I saw a folded twenty and this ticket. He said the twenty was mine if I’d come tell you that he was sorry he missed his appointment.”
“His appointment.”
“Yeah. He said to tell you he was sorry about that, and he was sure he’d see you later.”
She smiled brightly. “He seemed awfully sorry about it.”
“Yes,” Samantha murmured. “I’ll just bet he was.”
Jaylene said, “We’ve checked the phone lines, Caitlin. The phone company says they’re working fine. There’s nothing wrong with them.”
Sitting down on the edge of her bed, Caitlin said, “I’m not surprised. Or very reassured.” She eyed the other woman uncertainly. “Sam told me that if anything happened, I should call you. She said you’d understand.”
Jaylene sat down at one of the chairs at the table and smiled faintly. “I do understand, believe me. And if it helps, what you experienced is fairly common, one of the most common events in the annals of the paranormal.”
“It is? But I’m not psychic.”
“No, but you shared a blood connection with Lindsay; the bond between sisters is usually one of the strongest, no matter how emotionally distant that may seem during adulthood. There are many documented cases of recently deceased persons appearing or speaking to relations. Since you were her sister, it makes sense that if she tried to reach out, you would be the one best able to hear her.”
“Through the goddamned telephone?”
Jaylene said, “It does seem weirdly prosaic, doesn’t it? But, again, it isn’t terribly uncommon. Our best guess is that, like so much about psychic ability, it has to do with electromagnetic fields. Spiritual energy appears to be based on that, so it follows that the need to communicate could be directed through the natural conduits of power and phone lines. Energy manipulating energy.”
“So she couldn’t just talk to me, she needed to use . . . a device?”
Jaylene hesitated, then said carefully, “I’ve been told by mediums that there’s a transition time between death and the next phase of existence. During that time, it requires an exceptionally powerful or determined personality to communicate at all to a nonpsychic. It’s fairly difficult for them to communicate even to psychics. The fact that Lindsay was able to reach you is remarkable enough. That she was actually able to speak to you . . .”
“Have you ever talked to the dead?” Caitlin demanded.
