Haven (33 page)

Navarro said, “And how long was it before he hinted that you should deed this bit of land over to him?”

“Couple of years.” Victor’s mouth twisted. “I probably would have done it, if Jessie hadn’t come home. But I’d been stalling him, hoping I could convince Emma to sell out. Then Jessie came home, and I figured I had a shot at getting her land.”

Emma stared at him wonderingly. “It never occurred to you that she might be scarred by what happened to…her…fifteen years ago—and blame you for it?”

“Not until we talked at the festival. I didn’t know her memories had been fuzzy, Emma, that she thought that
I’d
been the one that night to…attack her. Hell, I didn’t know she blamed me for anything other than egging her on to drink too much.”

Emma shook her head, but said, “So you gave permission for Dan to build the cabin, and never bothered to visit it later?”

“No. When the tax appraisal came in higher than I expected, I asked the appraiser, and he said there was a pretty nice little cabin on the land, close to the creek. So, higher value, higher taxes. I wasn’t happy about that, and I told Dan if he was going to use the land, he was damned well going to pay the taxes. I expected him to get pissed about it, actually, but he just wrote me a check, and cheerfully too.”

“He didn’t want you focusing on the land,” Navarro said. “Didn’t want to make trouble, make you curious. As long as he believed he could persuade you to deed it over to him, it was in his best interests not to make waves.”

“
Yeah, I realize that. Now. And if I’d had any idea at all what the sick bastard was doing out here, I never would have told him that I expected to be able to persuade Jessie to sell me her land.
Or
that I already had a developer interested.”

Navarro said, “You threatened his secret. But he still believed he had some power over you—as long as Jessie was out of the way.”

“I thought she’d just leave,” Victor murmured. “Sell the land to me and leave. She never really belonged here. This place, this town, was too small to hold her.”

Emma was silent for a long moment, watching the crime scene technicians work, then brought up a last, baffling point. “Victor, what do you know about that tattoo of Dan’s?”

“The rose tattoo on his forearm? He told me once it was to honor his college girlfriend, but it was a pretty creepy homage—which is more understandable now that I know what he’s been doing all these years.” Victor shook his head. “A rose encased in a cage of thorns. Very distinctive.”

“He didn’t show it off,” she murmured.

“No, he usually wore long sleeves,” Victor agreed. “Even in summer. I never asked him why.”

Emma exchanged looks with Navarro, and she knew he was wondering what she was herself. Because surely, in all the years since, she would have seen Dan Maitland’s bare forearm. Had her mind protected her to the extent that she had been literally blind to it?

“It’s a powerful thing, the human mind,” Navarro said. “It knows how to protect itself.”

“It was that simple,” she murmured.

“It usually is simple, when you get to the truth,” Navarro said. “
Jessie went looking for the men she believed had scarred her life, but the skills of a trained investigator sent her off on a different path.”

“And she found a killer,” Hollis said, joining them. “Happens to me all the time.”

JULY 10

“The forensics team will be here for days if not weeks,” Navarro reported. “And it’s only the cops and a dozen private security guards keeping the media at bay. More or less.”

“How’s Emma doing?” Maggie asked.

“She’s…holding it together,” Navarro replied. “With so much hitting her at once, I half expected her to just shut down, but she’s stronger than that. She still isn’t sure about going public, but…horrific as it all is, she wants to remember, and face it all, and then put it behind her.”

“You know I can help,” Maggie said.

“I know. And I’ll tell Emma about that. But my hunch is that she’ll want to go it alone.”

“Not quite alone. You’re staying, aren’t you?”

He answered immediately, calm. “I’ve decided to take some of my leave time. A few weeks, maybe. We’ll see. With Maitland gone, maybe Baron Hollow will turn out to be a nice little town, after all.”

“Okay. Keep in touch.”

“I will. Thanks, Maggie.”

Maggie Garrett hung up the phone.

And smiled.

HOLLIS TEMPLETON, FBI SPECIAL CRIMES UNIT

Job:
Special agent, profiler-in-training

Adept:
Medium. Perhaps because of the extreme trauma of Hollis’s psychic awakening (see
Touching Evil
), her abilities evolve and change much more rapidly than those of many other agents and operatives. Even as she struggles to cope with her mediumistic abilities, each investigation in which she’s involved seems to bring about another “fun new toy” for the agent.

Appearances:
Touching Evil
,
Sense of Evil
,
Blood Dreams
,
Blood Sins
,
Blood Ties
,
Haven

JESSIE RAYBURN, HAVEN OPERATIVE

Job:
Investigator

Adept:
Medium. Also shares an uncertain one-way telepathic link with her sister. Jessie is not especially strong as a medium, and so is unnerved
by all the spirits she sees when she returns home in search of answers about her past.

JOHN GARRETT, COFOUNDER OF HAVEN

Job:
Oversees the organizational duties of running Haven, and makes certain all equipment, information, and assets are ready when his people require them.

Adept:
He is not psychic, but possesses a unique understanding of those who are.

MAGGIE GARRETT, COFOUNDER OF HAVEN

Job:
Handles the operatives and investigators who work for Haven, overseeing their training and, even more, monitoring their emotional and psychic welfare, both at base and when they’re in the field.

Adept:
An exceptionally powerful empath/healer, Maggie has the ability to literally absorb into herself the emotional and even physical pain of other people, in a sense speeding up their healing processes and helping them to cope with extreme trauma. The act of doing so requires that she give of herself, give her own energy and strength to the person she’s helping.

NOAH BISHOP, FBI SPECIAL CRIMES UNIT

Job:
Unit chief, profiler, pilot, sharpshooter, and trained in martial arts

Adept:
An exceptionally powerful touch-telepath, he also shares with his wife a strong precognitive ability, the deep emotional link between them making them, together, far exceed the limits of the scale developed
by the FBI to measure psychic talents. Also possesses an “ancillary” ability of enhanced senses (hearing, sight, scent), which he has trained other agents to use as well. Whether present in the flesh or not, Bishop always knows what’s going on with his agents in the field. Always.

REESE DEMARCO, FBI SPECIAL CRIMES UNIT

Job:
Special agent, pilot, military-trained sniper; has specialized in the past in deep-cover assignments, some long-term

Adept:
An “open” telepath, he is able to read a wide range of people. He possesses an apparently unique double shield, which sometimes contains the unusually high amount of sheer energy he produces. He also possesses something Bishop has dubbed a “primal ability”: he always knows when a gun is pointed at or near him, or if other imminent danger threatens.

TONY HARTE, FBI SPECIAL CRIMES UNIT

Job:
Special agent, profiler

Adept:
Telepath. Not especially strong, but able to pick up vibes from people, particularly emotions.

(As Classified/Defined
by Bishop’s Team and by Haven)

Adept
:
The general term used to label any functional psychic; the specific ability is much more specialized.

Clairvoyance
:
The ability to know things, to pick up bits of information, seemingly out of thin air.

Dream-projecting
:
The ability to enter another’s dreams.

Dream-walking
:
The ability to invite/draw others into one’s own dreams.

Empath
:
An empath experiences the emotions of others.

Healing
:
The ability to heal injuries to self or others, often but not always ancillary to mediumistic abilities.

Healing Empathy
:
An empath/healer has the ability to not only feel but also heal the pain/injury of another.

Latent
:
The term used to describe unawakened or inactive abilities, as well as to describe a psychic not yet aware of being psychic.

Mediumistic
:
A medium has the ability to communicate with the dead.

Precognition
:
A seer or precog has the ability to correctly predict future events.

Psychometric
:
The ability to pick up impressions or information from objects.

Regenerative
:
The ability to heal one’s own injuries/illnesses, even those considered by medical experts to be lethal or fatal. (A classification unique to one SCU operative and considered separate from a healer’s abilities.)

Spider sense
:
The ability to enhance one’s normal senses (sight, hearing, smell) through concentration and the focusing of one’s own mental and physical energy.

Telekinesis
:
The ability to move objects with the mind.

Telepathic mind control
:
The ability to influence/control others through mental focus and effort; an extremely rare ability.

Telepathy (touch and non-touch or open)
:
The ability to pick up thoughts from others. Some telepaths only receive, while others have the ability to send thoughts. A few are capable of both, usually due to an emotional connection with the other person.

UNNAMED ABILITIES INCLUDE:

The ability to see into time, to view events in the past, present, and future without being or having been there physically while the events transpired.

The ability to see the aura of another person’s energy field.

The ability to channel energy usefully as a defensive or offensive tool or weapon.