by Kay Hooper
“No need to on my account.”
Leo shook his head. “On everybody’s account. You haven’t been around much, so you haven’t realized that everybody is on edge and anxious. There’s just too much going on around here. I’ve even been asked by a few to pull up stakes in Golden and move on.”
Samantha didn’t look at Lucas. “We’re only supposed to stay here until next Monday.”
“Yeah. And we will—unless you change your mind about that.”
“We’ll see,” she said.
“Just let me know.” Leo sighed. “In the meantime, it’ll do everybody good to have a night off. Matter of fact, I think most of them want to go into town, stay at the motel. I can’t make out whether it’s nerves or just the usual occasional need to sleep somewhere other than the caravans.”
Lucas took Samantha’s hand, rather surprising her, and said to Leo, “Keep an eye on your people. I don’t think this killer would target any of you, but I can’t be sure. So watch your backs.”
“We will, Luke. Thanks.”
As he led her back toward the parking area and his rental car, Samantha said quietly, “Leo’s still grateful that you stood behind the carnival three years ago. When that garbage about gypsies stealing children hit the papers, a lot of ugly things started happening. If you hadn’t convinced the local police to provide some security for us and gone on the record as saying no one in the carnival was involved, God knows where it would have ended.”
“I was doing my job.”
“You did more than your job, and we both know it.”
Lucas silently unlocked the rental car and opened the passenger door for her.
She got in, once again conscious of weariness. And she wondered, as he came around the car and slid behind the wheel, if her plan was going to work. She wasn’t sure, not anymore. Yes, Luke had been able to find the sheriff today, in time and against all odds, but she had the sense now that his walls were even higher and thicker than they had been before.
She had gotten too close and he had shut down. Maybe for good.
As they left the fairgrounds, he said, “I need to stop by my room and pick up a few things.”
“You don’t have to stay with me tonight.”
“I’m not going to argue about this, Sam. I’m staying. For the duration.”
“If I have to have a watchdog, I’m sure Jaylene wouldn’t mind a roommate.”
“Stop pushing, Sam.”
“I’m not pushing, I’m trying to give you an out.”
“I don’t want an out.”
“Right, you just want to punish me with the silent treatment.”
“I’m not trying to—” He shook his head. “Christ, you make me crazy.”
“It doesn’t show. Very little shows, really, most of the time. On your face. There’s intensity inside, force, but you keep it damped down almost always, out of sight. Is that the way you were raised, to show no emotion, no feeling? Is that part of it?”
Lucas didn’t answer. In fact, he didn’t say a word for the remainder of the trip to his motel and then back to hers. Samantha remained silent as well, and once they were inside the room she left him locking the door and went to take her usual shower.
She didn’t linger, this time, under the hot water; it failed to either relax her or even begin to warm the chill deep inside her. She got out and dried off, put on her nightgown and robe. She toweled her hair, then used the wall hair dryer to completely dry it because she felt so cold.
When she came out of the bathroom and into the bedroom, she found Lucas on his feet but frowning at the television, and when she followed his gaze she could see why.
The exterior of the sheriff’s department—and their arrival with Wyatt Metcalf.
The anchorwoman was briskly introducing the reporter on the scene, and then he was on-screen with the sheriff’s department behind him. His voice held that urgent if muted excitement that was so common in television journalism, as he quickly brought viewers up to speed on the investigation and then detailed today’s search and rescue of the sheriff of Clayton County.
“. . . and a source close to the investigation claims that deputies and federal agents were aided in their search for the sheriff by an avowed psychic. The woman’s name is Samantha Burke, though she uses the name Madam Zarina when she tells fortunes in a carnival currently set up here in Golden. My source claims that she has apparently involved herself before in police investigations.”
Amazing, Samantha thought, how “involved herself” could sound so suspicious.
“Tom, have the police or federal agents confirmed that Miss Burke helped them to locate Sheriff Metcalf?”
“No, Darcell, officials refused to comment. However, my source is certain that she played a major role in recovering the sheriff alive, and locals are talking of little else. Earlier today, Miss Burke herself made a brief statement on the steps of the sheriff’s department, claiming that the person who abducted and murdered Detective Lindsay Graham last week had left an object in the detective’s apartment, which Miss Burke says triggered a vision. She did not share details of the supposed vision, but stated that she was certain the same person had abducted Sheriff Metcalf. She appeared willing to say more, but one of the federal agents involved in the investigation cut the statement short and pulled her into the building.”
Samantha sank down on the edge of the bed and murmured, “Shit.”
The anchorwoman, with only the faintest note of disbelief in her voice, said, “Kidnapping, murder, and mysticism in Golden; we’ll look forward to further reports, Tom.”
Lucas used the remote to turn off the TV and then dropped it onto the bed. He walked over to the window and pulled the curtains slightly to one side, gazing out.
Samantha knew a delaying tactic when she saw one, and wondered if he was actually too angry to speak. Part of her wanted to say something that might defuse the situation, but she knew she couldn’t do that. Not now.
Deliberately offhand, she said, “I just can’t get the hang of talking to reporters, can I?”
“Is that all you have to say?” His voice was very quiet.
She wanted to tell him the truth, that she had gambled her little press conference would only make the local papers and that it had been designed as much to anger him as anything else, another of her tactics intended to push through his walls.
But she was just too tired to get into all that, so she merely said, “Well . . . I can say I didn’t expect a TV reporter to quote me on the eleven o’clock news, naive as that sounds. There wasn’t a TV camera there, so . . . I can even say I made a mistake talking to the press at all. But what difference would any of it make, Luke? I became part of the story, and they were not going to let me pass unnoticed.”
“Just like before.” His words dropped into the quiet room like icicles.
“So it’s my fault, what happened before? It’s my fault that a reporter lied and claimed I knew who had abducted that child, that I’d seen it in a vision, and the kidnapper panicked and killed her?”
“I never said that.”
“You never had to. Oh, you blamed yourself for not finding her quickly enough, but we both know if I hadn’t been involved, that reporter would never have made his claim, would never even have speculated there was anything paranormal in the investigation. And maybe, just maybe, that little girl would have lived long enough for you to find her alive.”
Samantha had known that in pushing and prodding Luke she was likely to open her old wounds as well as his, but she hadn’t expected the strength of the pain.
Lucas turned but remained at the window. His face was hard, expressionless. “It wasn’t your fault,” he said.
“Once more with feeling.”
“What do you want from me, Sam? I never believed it was your fault. What I did believe, what I came to understand, was that Bishop was right about the issue of credibility. Because any unscrupulous reporter would find it a lot easier and a lot safer to fabricate somethi
ng as coming from the mouth of a carnival mystic than from a federal agent.”
“I won’t apologize for who and what I am.”
“Have I asked you to?”
“Sometimes it feels that way.”
He shook his head. “Even though you haven’t told me everything, I know enough to understand that you didn’t have many choices fifteen years ago. Life in a carnival over life on the streets? No question you made the better choice.”
Samantha waited for a moment, then said, “You aren’t going to ask, are you?”
“Ask what?”
“Ask what happened to leave me, at the age of fifteen, with just those two choices.” She kept her voice steady.
He hesitated visibly, then shook his head once. “This isn’t the time to get into—”
“Like I said, we’re running out of time. I honestly don’t expect much more, not for us. You aren’t in my future, remember? And if all we have is now, then I’d just as soon get all the skeletons out of their closets where we can both see them. Just in case we ever do meet again. Or just in case we never meet again.”
“Sam, you don’t have to do this.”
“You don’t want me to do this,” she said, knowing only as she spoke that it was the literal truth. “Because it’ll make it harder for you to walk away if I do.”
He frowned slightly but didn’t protest that statement.
She turned a bit on the bed in order to face him more fully and clasped her cold hands together in her lap. “Have a seat. This may take awhile.”
Lucas came away from the window and did sit down on the other side of the bed, but said, “It’s late. You’re tired, I’m tired, and we have another long day tomorrow. We have a killer to hunt down, Sam.”
“I know. Remember what I said that first day? You can’t beat him without me.”
“Because you can piss me off?” he asked.
She drew a breath, too tense to be able to see any humor now. “Because I make you listen to things you don’t want to hear. You refuse to let yourself feel pain or fear until you have absolutely no other choice. So I’m not giving you a choice.”
“Sam—”
Ignoring the beginning of protest, she said steadily, “I was six when I became psychic. It happened the first time he threw me against a wall.”
Jaylene watched the same news report and grimaced as she turned off the TV in her room. She wasn’t surprised when her cell phone rang a summons just minutes later.
She checked the caller I.D., then answered with, “You saw the news report, huh?”
“Yes,” Bishop said.
“Uh-huh. And just how long have you been close by?”
“Long enough.”
Jaylene sighed. “I had a hunch there was more going on than you were willing to say. I mean, I know you sometimes send in a watchdog or two without alerting the primary agents, even someone working undercover, but you don’t often turn up personally when another team member is leading an investigation.”
“This killer has more than a dozen notches on his belt, Jay, and he’s shown no signs of even slowing down. Or of conveniently wanting to be caught. He has to be stopped, and here.”
“No argument. But why the cloak and dagger? Why not just tell us you’re involved?”
“Because the killer’s focus is on Luke—and I’m too recognizable to the media.”
Jaylene knew that the latter, at least, was quite true; he had a memorable face and presence, did Bishop, and it was only very rarely possible for him to work undercover.
“You think if you showed up publicly, the killer would shift his focus?”
“No. I think he’d leave Golden and try to take his game elsewhere. He knows about us, Jay. About the SCU. And if any other team members showed up publicly, he’d very likely come to the conclusion that we had a decided edge in his game. A psychic edge.”
Thoughtful, Jaylene said, “And yet he lured Sam here. Think he doesn’t believe she’s genuine?”
“My guess is exactly that. Her involvement in the investigation three years ago was more or less a public fiasco, at least from the media’s reporting of it; anyone reading those reports would probably decide she was a phony.”
“So he wanted her here as a . . . distraction . . . for Luke?”
“Why not? Even if that angle didn’t work, chances were good the media would grab on to Samantha as a good story and at the very least add to the tension. Among the investigators and the townspeople.”
“Making it even harder for Luke to concentrate.” Jaylene frowned. “Yeah, but if this guy really is matching wits with Luke, why work so hard to turn the game to his own advantage? I mean, why not a level playing field?”
Bishop said, “A nicely sane, competitive mind would want that, yes. But a sociopath? He just wants to win, and never mind fair play. He wants to prove, in his own mind, that he’s better than Luke. Smarter, stronger. Manipulating people and events is just another way he’s doing that.”
“So we were being naive in even trying to figure out his rules.”
“I’d call it an exercise in futility.”
“Guess you’re right. Sam said something about broken minds not working the way we’d expect them to.”
“She’s right about that. The only thing we can know for sure,” Bishop said, “is that he has a personal grudge against Luke.”
“I assume you’re checking on that?”
“We’ve already gone back through his cases in the last five years, and nothing looks promising in the way of a lead. Harder to find out about his cases before he joined up, but we’re working on that.” Bishop paused, then added, “I don’t know if Luke could remember anything helpful, but it wouldn’t hurt to steer him in that direction.”
“He doesn’t talk about his past, you know that.”
“Doesn’t talk about it with a vengeance, yeah. But I’m hoping Samantha has had some effect.”
“Oh, she’s having an effect. I’m just not sure, when all’s said and done, what that effect will be.” It was Jaylene’s turn to pause, and then she said, “Straight out, boss—did you get in touch with Sam, or did she get in touch with you?”
Bishop sighed and murmured, “It really is hell trying to keep information away from psychics.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“She got in touch with me.”
“It’s that vision she had in the beginning, isn’t it? The one that made her decide to take the bait and come to Golden.”
“Yes. That’s all I can tell you, Jaylene. And more than Luke needs to know right now. He also doesn’t need to know that Galen is keeping an eye on you whenever you’re alone or that I’m anywhere near Golden.”
“More secrets from my partner?” She sighed.
“I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t believe it was important.”
“Yeah, you don’t need to remind me of that.”
“No,” Bishop said. “I didn’t think I did.”
Lucas had expected something bad. Samantha was too intelligent to have bailed out of any kind of normal family life, even at an age when hormones and youthful stupidity tended to rule far too many decisions and actions.
So he had expected bad. He hadn’t expected this.
Those dark, dark eyes never left his face, and her voice was steady, almost indifferent, as if the telling meant nothing to her. But he could see the tension in the hands knotted together in her lap, and he could see the pain in her pallor.
See it. But not feel it, not feel her pain.
Only his own.
“He was my stepfather,” she said. “My real father was killed in a car accident when I was still a baby. My mother was the type of woman who had to have a man around, had to feel she belonged to someone, so there was a succession of uncles while I was a toddler. Then she met him. And married him. And I don’t suppose she knew in the beginning that he liked to drink, and that drinking made him mean. But she found out. We both found out.”
“Sam—”
“I don’t remember what set him off that day. I don’t even remember being thrown against the wall, not really. I just remember waking up in the hospital and hearing my mother anxiously telling the doctor that I was clumsy and kept falling down the stairs. Then she put her hand on my arm, patting it, and I . . . saw what had happened to me. Through her memories. I saw myself flung against the wall like a rag doll.”
“A head injury,” Lucas murmured.
Samantha nodded. “Severe concussion. Kept me in the hospital for more than two weeks. And I still have horrendous headaches sometimes, lasting for hours. So bad they literally blind me.”
“You should have told me that sooner, Sam. Those nosebleeds—”
“Seem to be related to visions of violence. The headaches just come, suddenly, out of nowhere. I’ve never been able to pinpoint a specific cause.” She shrugged. “All part of the psychic package, apparently.”
Lucas muttered a curse under his breath but didn’t say anything else. There wasn’t much he could say; the SCU had learned long ago that moderate-to-severe headaches did seem to be the norm for a large percentage of psychics.
Samantha said, “I didn’t understand, of course, what it all meant. I didn’t understand about being psychic. All I knew was that I was different. And I came to know that being different made me a target of his rages.”
She paused, then added, “I learned to stay out of his way as much as possible, but as the years passed, he got worse. The rages got more violent, and he always wanted a target. He beat up my mother from time to time, but something about me seemed almost to . . . draw his anger.”
Roughly, Lucas said, “You know damned well it wasn’t you, wasn’t in any way your fault. He was a sick son of a bitch, and he hurt you because he could.”
Samantha shook her head. “I think he knew, somewhere inside him, just how different I really was. I wasn’t something he could understand, the way he understood my mother’s need of him. I never tried to argue with him or defy him, but I never gave him the satisfaction of hearing me cry, and that baffled him. I think he was afraid of me.”
Lucas felt another twinge of pain as he thought of how she must have looked beneath the brutal blows of a domestic monster, small, slight, defiantly silent. “Maybe. Maybe he was afraid of you. That doesn’t make it your fault.”
