A Deadly Web

by Kay Hooper

  “The list is getting longer,” she noted quietly.

  Bishop nodded.

  “And,” she added, “you aren’t content to just report it to your new contact and walk away.”

  “Brodie told me himself that once a psychic goes missing, they’ve never been able to recover him or her. They become notes in a Lost column. Some supposedly turn up as bodies destroyed beyond recognition; some are reported as runaways; some have a backstory in place before they supposedly jaunt off to another country somewhere. And some just vanish.”

  “Never to be heard from again?”

  “The suspicion seems to be that at least some psychics are taken to be used as soldiers in this secretive war. To gather information, to monitor psychics on this side, to look for weaknesses, to . . . label all the players.”

  “You have a problem accepting that?” she suggested.

  “Not exactly. I think some abducted psychics are being used as tools. But there has to be more at play here, there just has to be. Something this big and . . . sprawling . . . has to have more structure than we’re seeing. I believe Brodie’s side is organized just as we thought, composed of smaller cells around a central base only a handful of their people know anything about. But the other side, the ones they’ve been fighting so long . . . There has to be an ultimate goal, and that can’t just be . . . inexplicably collecting psychics.”

  “Some have said that’s what you do,” she ventured.

  “Sure. Collect them, train them, and give them badges or private investigators’ licenses, for the SCU or for Haven. But what I do, what we do, is very much out in the open. We may keep things quiet, but even the most suspicious cop hasn’t called us secretive. We use our psychic abilities as tools, as quietly—or as openly—as necessary to do the job.”

  Miranda nodded. “And this group, this faceless enemy, has to be doing some kind of job or have some kind of goal. Otherwise none of it makes sense. They can’t just be about trying to beat Brodie’s group to psychics.”

  “Exactly. Brodie and his people believe that this other group has been taking psychics for decades, at least. But they must have been a lot more careful and quieter until fairly recently, if that’s true. Because I never got a hint about them during the early years when I was searching out psychics for the SCU.” He shook his head slightly. “Granted, I wasn’t nearly as powerful then as now, and I wasn’t looking for patterns, but I interviewed a lot of psychics, Miranda. All over the country and even a few overseas.”

  “And there were no fearful psychics?”

  He leaned back against the desk behind him, frowning. “Plenty of fearful psychics. But naturally fearful, of their own abilities and the way other people in their lives reacted to them. Wary, suspicious, a lot of them in denial. But none I talked to was frightened by a secret conspiracy of stolen psychics and shadows.”

  Thoughtful, Miranda suggested, “Maybe there’s a difference now. Maybe they’re running out of time for some reason, feeling pushed to accomplish whatever it is they set out to do. Maybe Brodie and his group have had more of an effect on this enemy than they realize.”

  “Could be.”

  Eyeing him, Miranda said, “You promised not to interfere.”

  “I did, didn’t I?”

  “But?”

  He smiled slightly, a smile few but his beloved wife ever saw. It made the scar on his left cheek all but disappear, and warmed his cool silvery-gray eyes by a good twenty degrees. “But Katie and Henry aren’t psychics Brodie and his people have been aware of. At least, I’m fairly certain they haven’t.”

  “So you wouldn’t really be interfering if you did a little quiet detective work of your own.”

  “As long as your shield holds out, love, they’ll never know we haven’t gone obediently back to Quantico. Not, at least, unless or until we want them to know.”

  —

  Not surprisingly, Tasha didn’t sleep much the rest of the night. She went over and over in her mind every thought, every question—and every action of those men.

  Who they were was such a giant question mark that she didn’t spend too much time considering that for now.

  They were men who intended something bad for her.

  That much she was certain of.

  Why, she didn’t know; another giant question mark.

  How they got into the building . . . that was the most immediate worry. Because if she wasn’t safe here, in a building like this, if men could slip in past all the security both technological and human and get to her here, then safety really was an illusion. And then there was her cell phone. They shouldn’t have been able to leave that text without the number, and she could count on the fingers of one hand how many people had that number. With fingers left over. So how had they managed that? How had they managed to so easily just walk through all the security barriers she had wrapped around herself?

  What was she supposed to do, lock herself into a bank vault?

  I think they’d get to me even there.

  Don’t let fear rule you.

  How about panic? I think panic is good.

  Not panic either. Don’t let others dictate your responses.

  My responses?

  They act. You react.

  They who?

  We aren’t thinking about that right now.

  For several long minutes, Tasha stopped thinking about anything but the growing certainty that she really wasn’t arguing with herself. Because that other “voice” in her mind seemed way too calm, and way too knowing about what might have happened tonight—and why.

  Tasha.

  Go away. Whoever you are.

  I can help you. We can help you.

  Well, that was sure as hell unnerving.

  We? There’s a we? A we and a them?

  Two sides. They want to hurt you. We want to help you.

  Oh, yeah? And why is that?

  Which? A twinge of humor there.

  Oddly reassuring.

  Both. Who are they? Who are we?

  We don’t know who they are. A group. Motives unknown, but actions definitely deadly. We believe they’ve been . . . active . . . a long time. A large group. Organized. Secretive. Incredibly skilled at . . . disappearing people.

  Disappearing people? Why?

  Tasha, their interest is in psychics.

  Another unnerving moment. Tasha wished the sun would come up. She wished daytime would come. Because everything was normal in the day. Normal, and ordinary, and not scary.

  The other voice in her head was hers, that was it.

  Anything else was her imagination.

  You know better. You know yourself. You know this voice isn’t yours, isn’t you.

  Sure. Sure.

  All right. Think that way if you wish. For now.

  Enough. I’m over this. I don’t know what happened tonight or why, but tomorrow I’m going to the building super and—

  And what? Tell him someone broke into your condo in the night, you watched them do it, the security cameras didn’t and the security guards didn’t, but you did? You watched from the stairwell and alerted no one? You don’t know who they are or why they were here. You can’t explain how they got past security. You have nothing missing, no damage. No witnesses. And the building’s security system won’t show any signs of tampering.

  How do you know that?

  Because they’re good, Tasha. Very, very good. They don’t leave evidence behind. They don’t leave witnesses.

  I’m still here.

  Yes. You sensed them coming.

  Tasha hesitated, but . . . Yes.

  Maybe that’s what they wanted to accomplish. To find out if you’d sense them coming.

  That doesn’t make sense.

  Be rational. Think about it reasonably.

  There’s n
o reason to this.

  There’s reason to everything, even if it’s only their reason.

  Which is exactly zero help to me, because I don’t have a clue what their reason could be.

  You’re psychic, Tasha. They value psychics.

  Why?

  We don’t know.

  Then why the hell should I believe you?

  Think about it. Reason it out. There were three of them. Professionals. They weren’t here to kill you; it only takes one to kill someone sleeping in bed, as any normal killer would have expected you to be.

  Normal killer. Nice world you live in.

  You live in it too, Tasha.

  Tasha threw back the covers and slipped from bed. She went to the window and stood to one side looking through the blinds out on the quiet Charleston streets below. Even this late, this early, there were a few people about. Early-morning joggers. People who went to work very early or came home very late. A street-cleaning crew. A couple of yawning people who looked as if they had dressed in the dark walking their dogs; there was a small park half a block west, and most dog owners in the area clearly took advantage of it.

  A normal morning. Normal people doing normal things, things they did even before the sun came up.

  Tasha.

  Go away. I don’t believe in you.

  I want you to think about tonight. I want you to come up with a reason why those men would have come to your apartment.

  I already said. There’s no reason.

  They didn’t steal anything.

  No.

  They didn’t lie in wait for you to return.

  Another unsettling possibility Tasha hadn’t considered.

  Tasha?

  No. No, they came and went quickly. Very quickly. Maybe five minutes on this floor. Seven minutes at the outside.

  Also not here with rape on their minds. A gang rape is a brutal assault triggered by surroundings, by actions, by a situation. Almost never something cold-bloodedly planned beforehand.

  It made her feel queasy, but . . . Yes. I know. That’s not what they wanted.

  And yet they did want you.

  I can’t know that.

  Yes. You can. That’s why you sensed them. That’s why you were able to escape them tonight.

  Tonight. Escape them . . . tonight.

  Do you really believe it’s over, Tasha? Believe they won’t try again?

  “No,” Tasha heard herself whisper aloud. “I don’t believe that. I believe they will try again.”

  Yes. They will. And next time, you may not sense them coming.

  FOUR

  Tasha wasn’t sure whether she was able to erect her walls and so finally block that other voice in her mind or whether it simply went away; all she knew was that the inner conversation ceased.

  At least for a while.

  Not that she was able to sleep. In the end, by the time morning sunlight began to brighten her windows, she was up, showered, dressed, and very restless.

  That other voice had made a lot of sense about the uselessness of Tasha going to the building’s superintendent to report the break-in, seeing as how she had no evidence it had happened. And hadn’t reported at the time or afterward anything she had seen. Of course, she could always at least ask to see the security videos from the previous night, but . . .

  What would that accomplish?

  Nothing.

  Electing to have her morning coffee and some kind of muffin or pastry out of the apartment that no longer felt at all safe to her, Tasha went downstairs and through the lobby, casually greeting the security guard at the main desk and the concierge at hers as she passed.

  She knew both of them by name, just as she had known the guards she had seen working the previous night. She had made it her business to know who guarded her building, her condo.

  For all the good that had done.

  Security is an illusion.

  Definitely her own voice in her mind now, nothing else.

  Tasha went out into the mild January morning, joining the other early risers on the sidewalk. It was a Saturday, so the people moving about were mostly casual and unhurried, enjoying the sunshine and fresh air.

  At least, that was how they appeared.

  But Tasha had the notion that at least some of them were not what or who they appeared to be. She wanted to chalk that up to paranoia, but it was less a thought than a . . . an odd, inner chill breeze causing the hair on the nape of her neck to stand out.

  Instinct.

  She felt surrounded somehow, and not at all in the sense of being part of a crowd. Not because she was on a city street. Not because people were all around her, most clearly preoccupied by their own thoughts and concerns.

  What Tasha felt was something a lot more primitive, even primal.

  There was a threat.

  Someone was watching her.

  Right now.

  She hesitated for only a few moments near the doorway into her building, then ignored her own uneasiness and headed for the crosswalk, her ultimate destination the coffee shop on the corner diagonally across from her condo.

  It wasn’t part of a chain, the coffee shop, but a local business that had been here for a long time. There were little tables both inside the shop and outside on the wide sidewalk. Tasha as usual chose a table outside, sitting with her back to a little corner niche that was brick rather than glass window. Something solid at her back, positioned so that no one could approach her unseen.

  She’d begun to think of it as “her” seat, and had been amused to find herself feeling offended the previous week to find it occupied one morning. She thought she might have even glared at the woman who had sat there totally focused on her cell phone.

  Tweeting. E-mailing. Sending someone a text or replying to one. Playing a game.

  Who knew?

  Just a few moments after Tasha settled into her corner, someone came to take her order. As jittery as she felt, she still needed her morning caffeine, and so she ordered a double-shot latte and a muffin.

  Waiting for her order to come, Tasha wished she could pull out her cell phone and occupy herself with it. But there were two reasons why she couldn’t do that. One, the more she used the phone, the quicker it died on her, and she was wary of not being able to use it if she really needed to at some point.

  And, two, there was no way she could focus on anything as innocuous as e-mail or a game.

  Not when she felt so edgy.

  Not after last night.

  And there was a third reason she really didn’t want to think much about. That text. She didn’t want to look at her phone and find another text like that one waiting for her.

  Dead.

  A threat?

  A promise?

  Or just a taunt?

  Tasha didn’t know, but as she looked out on the people moving casually along the sidewalks, the Saturday traffic passing her little corner of the world, she admitted to herself that it was something she couldn’t avoid thinking about.

  And yet . . .

  It was, if anything, less unnerving than watching three men silently enter her apartment in the middle of the night. The text was . . . like a flourish somehow. Done for show rather than purpose.

  It had certainly given her a chill, if that had been the objective. But the eerily silent visit from those men had been more than enough to do that much.

  She was still chilled, if the truth be told. And she found her gaze roving all around, not really looking at any one person, yet watching all of them.

  Wondering who was watching her.

  —

  “That’s a lot of aspirin,” Brodie noted as he watched Murphy swallow half a dozen pills with a drink of her coffee.

  “I have a lot of headache.” Murphy grimaced and shifted her chair a bit back under t
he shade of the awning. “Jesus, it’s bright out here.”

  “The sunny South.”

  She grunted.

  “Not a morning person, are you?”

  Murphy didn’t waste a glare. “No. Not when I’ve been up all night.”

  “You couldn’t take a break?”

  “She was awake, so I was awake.”

  “And you didn’t see how they got into the building.”

  “I did not.” There was something in her grim tone that said she took that failing personally.

  “And they were able to hack into the security system. Without raising any red flags.”

  “Apparently. Building security looks calm today and I doubt they would if they were aware of what happened last night. No technical people in the building to check out, service, or fix anything. The other residents I’ve seen leave the building so far also looked as though they had no worries at all. She’s the only one, and you have to look close to realize just how jumpy she is.”

  “She knows she’s the one they came for.”

  “She watched them come for her. From the stairwell.”

  Brodie looked thoughtful. “So alert but curious. I’m not sure that’s such a good thing.”

  “She’s known for a while she was being watched. Last night, she saw men come for her. Three men. So she knows, if she had any doubt, that it isn’t a stalker kind of problem. It’s worse than that. A lot more inexplicable than that. A lot more deadly.”

  “She didn’t call the police?”

  “She didn’t even call the building super or the security desk in the lobby. She’s not a stupid woman, Brodie, and she doesn’t know who to trust. All she knows is that danger is all around her. That she’s safer with people all around her. And she’s not sure if it’s instinct or something else urging her to stay put rather than run.”

  “How long were you in her head?”

  “It’s not quite like that, and you know it.”

  “How long?”

  “Off and on all night.”

  “That part of the reason for your headache?”

  “Oh, yeah. Sleepless nights I can handle. It’s no sleep on top of being a psychic conduit that’s causing the jackhammers pounding inside my head.”