Acquired Motives (Dr. Sylvia Strange Book 2) (40 page)

     
Benji nodded, and Sylvia pulled a pack of Camel filters from her shirt pocket She shook one out; Benji accepted the cigarette. Sylvia took one for herself. They used Benji's matches to light up.

     
They smoked in silence until the burning ash drew close to their fingers. The smoke gathered in translucent layers only to be dispersed by the breeze. The sun felt good.

     
Benji sighed and squeezed the cigarette butt between his paint-smeared fingers.

     
Sylvia stared at him; her eyebrows were arched and the cigarette dangled from the corner of her mouth. She took a last drag and stamped out the butt on the concrete. "How the hell did you happen to be on that mountain?"

     
Benji looked the psychologist directly in the eye. "I was on that work crew all day. I never left. Ask anybody."

     
Sylvia tipped her head. "So they all say. Matt told me you showed him the way."

     
"You better see what your man's been smokin'."

     
"Three times, he's been out to measure the distance from Old Las Vegas Highway to Judge Howzer's house. He can't believe you made it up that mountain in time."

     
A faint smile crept across Benji's mouth. "But who can say, eh?"

     
"Me, I just wonder how you knew where to go?"

     
"For weeks those weather guys been saying the watershed was gonna burn by lightning."

     
Sylvia stood and nodded. Her sunglasses had slipped down her nose, and she nudged them up.
A well-informed intuitive
. . . That was one explanation.

     
She turned to Benji and held out her hand. He took it, and they shook solemnly. Then he walked back to the wall and his work.

     
When Sylvia was almost to the gate, she heard Benji's quiet voice.

     
He said, "I had another dream last night . . . . I got a message for you." She was still perfectly visible in his handheld mirror. Her eyes were wide and deep. Her posture was strong.

     
She said, "What was it?"

     
"It's time to find your father."

S
YLVIA
WAS
SITTING
under the piñon in her side yard, reading, when she saw Rosie and Ray's Camaro pull into the drive. Rocko sprinted toward the car, barking ferociously.

     
Rosie waved as she stepped out. Ray slid out the passenger's side, but he stayed beside the car. He had a peculiar look on his face; he also held something in his hand.

     
A leather belt.

     
No, a leash
.

     
And Rocko was going crazy—barking, growling, tail wagging.

     
Sylvia set down the book, stood, and moved a few feet to the right. The leash disappeared around the rear of the Camaro. Ray tugged on it and smiled.

     
Sylvia was already thinking of some way to protest; she knew what was coming. She raised up both hands, palms out. "No way!"

     
The leash strained, then gained some slack. Finally, a shepherd appeared from behind the Camaro. The dog was lean, and her fawn-colored coat was matted. She kept her head low and bared her teeth.

     
Sylvia recognized her from the kennels at the penitentiary. Nikki, the drug dog who couldn't keep her mind on her work.

     
Rosie said, "Nikki's probation was revoked when she couldn't sniff out a joint in a cell."

     
Sylvia said, "I don't need another dog."

     
Rosie set her hands on her hips. "But Nikki needs a home."

     
"This dog's a nervous wreck."

     
Rosie said, "She just needs someone who will love her. She just needs a family of her own."

     
The fur on Nikki's back stood up straight and she began to bark. The sound was sharp and frightening. Rocko growled, hackles up.

     
Sylvia groaned, but she could feel her resistance weaken.

     
Over the noise, Sylvia said, "I talked to the Bagman. I called him for a conference."

     
Rosie nodded uncertainly.

     
Sylvia said, "Don't worry, the lawsuit looks good, but it may not come to that." Her eyes narrowed as she remembered her meeting with the Bagman. He'd been seated at his massive desk. On the wall behind his head, a photograph of the governor. And the Bagman chattering away: "I have to admit I underestimated you, Sylvia. Malcolm would be proud of his spunky protégée."

     
Sylvia punched Rosie's arm playfully. "I couldn't believe he actually called me 'spunky.' But he's going to help us. I think the warden's pendejo-in-a-suit may be out on his ass very soon."

     
A wide smile transformed Rosie's face. "Thanks,
jita
."

     
Now the dogs were sniffing each other gingerly, nose to butt.

     
Ray shrugged and held out the leash. He said, "It's the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

POCKET BOOKS
PROUDLY PRESENTS

THE
DR. SYLVIA STRANGE
NOVELS

SARAH LOVETT

DANGEROUS ATTACHMENTS

A DESPERATE SILENCE

DANTES' INFERNO

All available soon in paperback from Pocket Books

and

DARK ALCHEMY

Coming soon in hardcover from Simon & Schuster

Turn the page for a preview. . . .

DANGEROUS ATTACHMENTS

Hunted by the escaped killer known as the Jackal, Sylvia must stay one step ahead or become the madman's next prey
.

El chacal
, the Jackal, stood on the second tier of cell block one and stared down at the activity on the floor below. In the common area, four inmates were playing a round of bridge. A fifth inmate sat rigid in front of the TV and whispered to Brooke, a regular on
The Bold and the Beautiful
. The jackal sighed; an honest day's labor was rare in this world.

     
He closed his eyes and silently recited the words of St. Ignatius Loyola. "Teach us, good Lord, to serve Thee. . . to toil and not to seek for rest; to labour and not ask for any reward save that of knowing that we do Thy will."

     
It was a lesson most of the occupants of CB-1 had not yet learned. And there were other lessons: thou shalt not steal. . . thou shalt not kill.

     
He turned back to gaze into an open cell. The small square window was already charcoal gray. Each day another two minutes of daylight were lost. It would keep on that way—getting darker and darker—until the winter solstice.

     
Day and night, just like his own two selves. He'd grown so used to them, he hardly noticed the transformation anymore. Day getting shorter. Night, longer and longer, ready to take its due.

     
It was the killing that made him split apart in the beginning. Or maybe the split was the reason he had begun to kill

     
Thou shalt not kill. Finally, after doing so many bad, hurtful things, he had learned: thou shalt not kill.

     
Unless you are doing His will.

To labour and not ask for any reward
Save that of knowing that we do Thy will
.

     
The jackal had been offered a task, but had not even considered it, until the Lord intervened. The Lord said, "Accept the task, jackal, and be rewarded."
His will be done
.

     
The task was to kill. Not a senseless, selfish kill like some of the men had done, like he himself had done a long time ago. This kill was part of the Lord's divine plan.

     
On earth as it is in heaven
.

     
The reward was great: it would become the crowning glory of his work for the Lord.

     
He sighed and gazed down at the sheet of paper he'd been clutching in his right hand. Things had been going so well.

     
But then, a snafu. Somebody was nosy.

     
And now, he had twice the work.

     
One hit had become two hits.

     
The second name was written in pencil, faint but legible. His own handwriting. Over and over. Just the way the nuns had taught him to write
Be sure your sin will find you out
—on the blackboard one hundred times.

     
The second name covered the page ninety-seven times. The jackal thought it was an odd name. He took the stub of pencil from his pocket, licked the tip, and smoothed the sheet of paper over the rail. In minute script he added the last three repetitions: Sylvia Strange Sylvia Strange Sylvia Strange.

A DESPERATE SILENCE

Dr. Strange is used to dealing with the most demented killers, but she is faced with a whole new challenge when the key to a murderer's identity is locked in the mind of child traumatized into silence
.

     
The girl gripped the steering wheel with both hands. Her fingers were pale where knuckles stretched skin, her arms were thin as sticks. Bones—not flesh—defined her body. Toes on toes, her bare feet pressed the accelerator flush against the Honda's floorboard. Her head scarcely topped the dashboard, but she saw the narrow horizon of black-top change suddenly to desert and barbed wire. Raising a wake of dust, the car hurtled headlong off the highway toward a fence. Gravel smacked the windshield.

     
As the fence loomed closer, the world careened past the moving car—low trees, jutting rocks, rolling terrain. The child's chest heaved, but all sound of her breathing was smothered by a song blaring from the radio. The music rose tinnily above the rattle of loose metal and the high-pitched whine of hot engine.

     
The girl jerked the steering wheel to the left, straining her muscles, frantic when the vehicle didn't respond the way Paco had taught her it would. She was sure the car would crash and she would die in flames and twisted metal. For an instant, she imagined giving in to the black night. But she was a fighter, and so she focused the last reserves of her energy on steering the car. Finally, she felt the shudder of tires forced back onto the hard surface of the road.

     
Dim yellow headlamps filled the rearview mirror, and the child's heartbeat stuttered. It was
el demonio
, the demon—with his dark hungry face. The lights glowed like the eyes of a crazy animal. A sudden memory jolted through her mind: fingernails scratching her neck just as Paco's strong arms pulled her from the demon's reach.

     
But there were no grown-ups with her now—and no safe place. Just the yellow glowing eyes of her pursuer growing larger in the rearview mirror.

     
Blood smeared the girl's cheek and lip. Dried blood where she had slammed her cheek against metal, fresh blood where she bit her lip in fright. A deep blue-black bruise darkened the inside of her left thigh. Beneath the delicate chain and the silver medallion around her neck, the skin was red and scratched where the demon had torn at her with long cold fingers.

     
Suddenly, there was a new danger—bright flashing lights in
front
of the Honda—coming at her! These lights snaked across the road, blocking her path. The child was trapped. Her eyes opened wide, and panic stole her breath away.

     
What was it? A truck? A bridge?
A train!

     
She swerved the Honda and hit the brakes again—but too hard. The car went into a skid, across the road toward barbed wire and tracks. She couldn't escape the metal snout of the train engine.

     
A cry of terror escaped the child's mouth, just as a fat hunter's moon broke over the foothills of the Sangre de Cristos. The moon's glow suffused the night sky. She whispered the first words of the prayer.

     
Our Mother, Nuestra Madre
—

     
And then she squeezed her eyes shut as a solid wall of moving metal caught the front end of the Honda. The noise of rending steel and a shower of sparks raked the night as the train pushed the car fifty yards along the track.

     
The dark green Chevrolet Suburban slowed on U.S. 285 just south of Lamy, New Mexico, and Lorenzo Santos Portrillo tried to make sense of what he'd just witnessed: the Honda had collided with a train. He peered out into the moonlit desert, straining to locate the ruined car, to gauge the seriousness of the accident. What he saw was an illuminated mess of smoke and dust and twisted metal roughly a quarter mile away. Directly ahead, the stalled train blocked the road.

     
His eyes were invisible in the unlit interior of the vehicle. His even white teeth were clenched. The scent of citrus cologne clashed with the uncharacteristic tang of nervous sweat and blood. Despite his agitation, Lorenzo's physical movements remained tightly controlled, but his mind refused to harness information with its usual discipline. He'd seen a ghost tonight; at first he believed she'd returned from the grave to do him evil.

     
But her terror had persuaded him she was merely human.

     
Renzo eased his foot off the accelerator, letting the Suburban coast. He was focused on the flashing lights of the train, and he almost failed to register a car, hazard lights blinking, pulling off to the side of the road opposite the scene of the accident.

     
The warning message squeezed through to his consciousness:
more people to deal with tonight
. They were crossing the road, shining flashlights over the terrain as they approached the crash.