Hostage (17 page)

“Why?”

“Because there are spirits here. A lot of them. Inside the house, outside on the grounds. Pretty much everywhere. People who might have been guests or family. Certainly servants. From their clothing, people who lived more than a hundred years ago—and in just about all the decades since.”

“And that’s unusual?” Anna ventured, clearly at sea.

Hollis wanted to chew on her nail again but managed not to. “Well, yeah, it is. As a general rule, spirits tend to stay where they died, or in a place where they have family or other emotional ties. So seeing so many spirits from so much of the past, all gathered in one place, it’s the sort of thing mediums experience in hospitals, in asylums and prisons, in really old hotels or other buildings with violent histories. Where people were murdered and committed suicide. Where bad things, negative things, happened a lot. Places that often housed horrible, tragic events like fires or explosions—events that killed a lot of people all at once.”

“But you said . . . they were from different decades.”

“Yeah, which is something I’d expect from an old hospital or old hotel, even if there hadn’t been a major tragedy. Just people, as you said, living and dying. Over years, over decades. But this is the first time I’ve ever seen so many in a private home—or even part-time hotel. And there’s something else I find really odd.”

“What is it?”

Hollis considered a moment, then said, “Last night, when Jamie Bell appeared to me, she had a message for your brother-in-law. That’s all, the only reason she’d stayed here. She knew she was dead, remembered how it happened, even had some awareness of how long ago it had been. She delivered her message and then she . . . went on. To whatever’s next. That’s—well, if anything can be called normal when you’re discussing the paranormal, that is. That kind of experience for a medium. We concentrate, we open a kind of doorway, and if we connect, it’s because there’s someone on the other side with unfinished business. Someone who needs to do something or convey some kind of information before they can move on.”

“And these other spirits you see aren’t like that?”

“No. I’m not even sure if they know they’re dead.” She paused again, reading Anna’s expression, and hastily said, “There’s no reason to be afraid. Not of them. I mean, if they’ve been here as long as I think they have, and nobody’s noticed, why would anything change now?”

“Well, you’re here.”

Hollis watched Owen Anderson emerge from the shadows beside the door and cross the room to them, wondering how long he’d been there listening. And why she hadn’t realized he was there. “Yeah, I’m here. So?” She tried not to sound as belligerent as he made her feel.

Owen sat down in the fourth chair of the grouping. He didn’t seem as openly distrustful as he had the evening before, but then, whatever he felt, little was showing on his impassive face. “So mediums open doors, you said. Doors to let in spirits.” His tone was neutral.

“Doors. Not floodgates.” She wished she didn’t feel so damned prickly with him, but the man got on her nerves.

“Meaning all these spirits you say you see aren’t spirits
you
let in?”

She thought he was taking a perverse pleasure in repeating the word “spirit” because every time he said it, it sounded . . .

“I would have known if I’d let them in,” Hollis said firmly, not at all sure about that. “I don’t know how much you heard just now, but in case you missed it, I think a lot of these spirits have been here a
long
time.”

“Here, or on the other side of that door you opened?”

* * *

“IT’S NOT THAT
I’m doubting you,” Tony said.

Bishop looked at him.

“Okay, maybe a smidge. You just seem a little . . . rattled by whatever’s going on in Tennessee. And that’s not just unusual, it’s as rare as hen’s teeth. And unsettling.”

“Surely you didn’t think I was infallible, Tony.”

“That’s not the word I would have picked.” Tony paused, then added, “But you’ve always been in control, or at least most of the time. Always the chess grandmaster, thinking six or eight moves ahead.”

To that, Bishop merely responded, “I don’t think of my agents or Haven operatives as pawns, I hope you realize that.”

“That’s not what I meant. Just that you . . . anticipate things. Or know about them before they happen. Maybe both. But with Tennessee—”

“All I said was that Callie should have checked in by now.”

“Yeah, you said that. And you were frowning. I’m not saying you never frown, but that was a worried frown if I’ve ever seen one. And you never worry.”

“Maybe I just don’t show it most of the time. I worry, Tony, believe me. Especially when something I don’t recognize blocks me.”

“Now, see, that’s the part that worries
me
,” Tony said. “That there’s a Big Bad out there that you don’t recognize. Which would make it new. And new is never good when we’re talking about Big Bads.”

“I don’t know every evil that exists. No one does. We face things as they come, remember?”

“Well, I heard you tell Hollis something like that.”

“It’s the truth, and one you should recognize by now.” Bishop shook his head. “Once events are set in motion, once people and their emotions are involved, all bets are off. Something even more true when you throw an unknown energy source into the mix.”

“Hollis tell you that?”

“No.”

Tony waited, then said, “What is going on down there? On both sides of that mountain?”

All Bishop said in response to that was, “Callie should have checked in by now. She really should have.”

* * *

OWEN’S CHALLENGE STOPPED
Hollis, but only for a moment. “Here. They behave as if they’ve always been here. They stroll in the gardens, and swim in the pool, and play tennis. Servants wait on them. They . . . walk through walls where there used to be doors.”

That did, clearly, startle him. “What?”

“In the dining room, this morning, I watched a maid check the dishes on the sideboard and then disappear through the wall in that far corner. I assume there was once a door there. A second door into the kitchen hallway and the servants’ quarters on this floor.”

Owen frowned.

Anna, a bit pale, looked at him and said quietly, “Tell her.”

“Anna—”

“Just tell her, Owen.”

“Tell me what?” Hollis asked warily.

“She could have read the police report,” Owen said to his sister-in-law.

“That wasn’t in the report and you know it. Your father didn’t want the others to know the truth. So he made sure Thomas was the only one. And we both know Thomas will take a lot of family secrets to his grave.”

“He wasn’t the only one of the servants who knew.”

Owen shook his head. “No. Burton wouldn’t have talked. No matter where he went, he wouldn’t have talked. A man wouldn’t talk about something like that. It reflected very badly on him.”

“Tell me what?” Hollis repeated, louder this time.

Owen was still frowning, so it was Anna who met Hollis’s gaze and said, “Earlier, when I told you about the maid who fell down the stairs—that was the official story. What really happened is that she hanged herself in what used to be the second doorway from the dining room to the kitchen hallway.”

DeMarco, silent until then, said, “An odd place to commit suicide. Women tend to be more . . . private . . . than that. Unless it was to make some kind of a point?”

“She was pregnant,” Owen said abruptly. “By a young man who was then the underbutler, and who denied being the father of her child. As soon as he opened his bedroom door the morning after we all learned about the situation, her body was the first thing he saw.”

“‘All’ of you meaning—?”

Anna sighed. “Claudia—the maid—came to me in tears the night before, late. I hadn’t been married to Daniel very long and wasn’t really accustomed to having a maid. I didn’t know what to do. Daniel came in and, even though Claudia seemed even more distraught, I told him.”

Hollis murmured, “I’m sure that went over well.”

Guiltily, Anna said, “I don’t think Claudia forgave me for telling him. But I— Anyway, Daniel got Thomas, who was the only senior staff member still up, and they got Claudia back to her room quietly. Daniel told me that she wouldn’t be turned out without a reference or anything dreadful like that, that he knew of homes for unwed mothers, that he’d make sure she was taken care of. And when she could work again, he’d make sure she was able to get a job.”

“But not here,” DeMarco said.

Anna lifted her chin a bit. “He reassured her as best he could. She wouldn’t be abandoned, left alone to fend for herself and her child. She’d have the help she needed, as long as she needed it. And he told her that Burton—the young man—would certainly lose his job here. Thomas was going to tell him the next morning.”

“But he saw Claudia first,” Hollis said slowly. “So he also knew the truth about how she really died.”

Anna said, “Thomas said he suggested that Burton, who seemed genuinely shaken, go outside for some air. He thought there’d be time enough later to tell Burton about losing his job if, indeed, that was still going to be the outcome.”

Hollis lifted her brows. “With the pregnant girl out of the way and underbutlers at a premium, Burton might not have been fired?”

Owen grunted. “He would have. Might have been allowed to work a notice, but I don’t believe my father would have allowed him to stay.”

“Anyway,” Anna said, “Thomas suggested that Burton take a walk and get himself under control while Thomas went to inform Mr. Alexander.”

“Your father-in-law?”

“Yes.”

“You called him—”

“Mr. Alexander, yes. My entire married life. He was . . . that sort.”

Hollis shook off the tangent. “Okay, so Thomas went for Mr. Alexander, and once again he decided to fix things so nobody in the house looked bad.”

Owen sent her a brief glare, but it was rather halfhearted.

Anna said, “He was very concerned that no scandal touch the family. It was his way, his conviction that such things could be harmful to the family and the business. And she was gone, took her own life, so what harm would it really do to call it an accident instead? A fall, perfectly understandable. They were able to—to cut her down and move her to the bottom of the stairs before any of the other servants were out of their rooms.”

Evenly, DeMarco said, “And the ligature marks around her neck?”

Anna’s hands twisted even more in her lap. “There . . . weren’t really any marks. Her uniform had a high collar, you see. And she’d used a twisted bedsheet rather than a rope. The doctor Mr. Alexander called in said that a little bruising from a broken neck was natural, especially if she—if she died instantly, as he believed she had. He signed the death certificate.”

“And the county sheriff accepted it,” Hollis murmured. “Because how could it have been anything but an accident?” Before anyone could respond to the rhetorical question, she frowned and said, “Why did Mr. Alexander decide to close off that door?”

“He never said.” Anna shrugged. “I doubt anyone ever asked.”

“Even though it made the servants’ job harder with just the one door to serve the dining room?”

“No one would have questioned him. Whatever was said belowstairs, I’m sure Thomas kept speculation to a minimum.”

“I’m sure,” DeMarco murmured.

“Belowstairs.” Hollis shook her head. “I feel like I’ve wandered into
Masterpiece Theatre
.”

“You’re not alone,” DeMarco told her.

“I suppose much of this does sound old-fashioned,” Anna allowed, “but as long as Mr. Alexander was alive, things were done much as they had been for generations. The only real difference was that the emphasis on farming and livestock gave way to his various other business interests away from the property, from the land, and so he flew into Knoxville or Nashville two or three times a week.”

“Flew?”

Owen said, “The company helicopter. Obviously, being this far out meant travel was more difficult.” He shrugged. “It was a necessity rather than a convenience. After our father died, Daniel and I also flew to our offices at least a couple of times each week.”

“And you still do?” Hollis asked.

With another shrug, Owen said, “It isn’t so necessary now. Daniel and I were never as driven as our father was, so we gradually gave up controlling interests in most of the companies. I still attend board meetings and the like, but the day-to-day running of the businesses was turned over to others a long time ago.”

Vaguely curious, Hollis asked, “Do you still use the helicopter?”

“When I need it, it’s flown over from Knoxville. Or if Anna needs it, of course.”

“I hate the thing,” she murmured. “I’d much rather be driven, even if it does take a lot longer.”

Hollis looked at her for a moment, then forced her mind back to the recently unveiled family secret. “So . . . nobody outside the family—and Thomas—ever knew that Claudia killed herself. But what about Burton? I suppose Mr. Alexander found a way to keep him quiet? I mean, probably not with the family a long time, like Thomas, so loyalty couldn’t be counted on, especially since he was being fired. A nice severance package?”

She looked at DeMarco and said, “Can you believe we’re having a conversation like this? In this day and age?”

“Not really,” he replied, his gaze on Anna’s still-writhing fingers.

Owen said, “Burton never came back. From his walk that morning. None of us ever saw him again.”

TEN

Luther was still too shaken to say much on the way back to the cabin, but once they were there, he asked one of the many questions swirling around in his mind.

“It’s Friday? You said it was Friday.”

“It’s Friday,” she confirmed, using an antiseptic wipe from her first-aid kit to clean the almost invisible cut on her neck.

Almost invisible. To Luther, it looked like a murderous slash. And it could have been; that was what scared him. Callie had picked up his knife and carried it back here because he didn’t want to touch it. He looked toward the door, where Cesar lay on his accustomed rug, watching Luther but without apparent malice or even visible tension.

The other three dogs, who had remained in the cabin during an outing whose purpose and destination was still a blank to Luther, were lying around the living area of the cabin, each on a thickly folded blanket or rug that served as a bed. They all looked completely calm and relaxed.

In fact, Lucy was snoring.

“What happened to Thursday?” Luther asked.

Callie frowned slightly and, finished with her neck, went to pour out two cups of coffee. She brought Luther’s and set it on the coffee table in front of him, then sat down in the chair opposite him and sipped hers.

“Callie?”

“Well, I’m no doctor so I don’t know the technical term, but my guess is that you experienced some kind of whiteout.”

“I’ve never heard of that before.”

She shrugged. “It’s known to be a side effect of some drugs. And we’ve documented a few cases on the psychic end of things, apparently caused by exposure to energy, electrical and otherwise. It’s the opposite of a blackout, in a sense. You walked through yesterday, and as far as I could tell, you were completely yourself. Acted normally. Spoke normally. Nothing to indicate you weren’t completely here. Mind you, I had and still have my shields up; maybe I would have noticed something odd otherwise. Or maybe not.”

“I don’t remember anything.”

“Yeah, that’s what makes it a whiteout. To everyone around you, you’re behaving normally. To you, it’s like you dozed off sometime late Wednesday and slept all the way through Thursday and through this morning. What’s the last thing you remember?”

He thought about it. “Lunch. Wednesday. We’d more or less arrived at a plan to stick close to the cabin for at least another day to give my leg a chance to heal. I thought we should call for backup and/or haul ass out of here. And you were going to contact Bishop. In fact, you started to contact him.”

Callie sipped her coffee again. “Yeah, about that.”

“What about it?”

“You don’t remember?”

Luther concentrated, searching through maddening wisps of memory or knowledge. “You were . . . There was a shot I was supposed to give you if something went wrong when you contacted Bishop.”

“Except that never happened.”

“The shot?”

“Or any contact with Bishop.”

Luther stared at her, then said, “Christ, I didn’t do anything to hurt you
then
, did I?”

“You’d have more than a leg wound to worry about if you had. Cesar was watching, remember. And I hadn’t given him a hold command.”

“You told me . . . he’d react if something negative happened.”

“Yeah. And he didn’t. But when I dropped my shields to make contact with Bishop and Miranda, there was . . . definitely something wrong. Something out there. Almost but not quite pushing back. Not close exactly, but wherever it was, it was a kind of barrier preventing me from reaching out. It was like tuning in to a radio station but getting nothing except static. I couldn’t get through.”

“At all?”

“No. And the harder I tried to push through, the worse the static got. I decided I’d better back off and get my shields back up, so I did. And kept them up. When I opened my eyes, you were clearly worried and Cesar was calm. So whatever it was, he didn’t sense it—or wasn’t bothered by it. Maybe because whatever it was, it really wasn’t
here
. I reached out—and it stopped me somewhere outside myself from reaching further.”

Luther picked up his cup and took a long swallow, hoping the caffeine would help clear his head. It didn’t. Much.

“Okay. I’m assuming nothing much happened Thursday. Yesterday.”

“No. Cesar and I took the other dogs out a few times, but they didn’t want to go very far from the cabin, so we didn’t. He and I went out once alone, just to scout a bit farther. The rest of the time, you and I talked some. Cleaned our weapons. Swapped a few war stories.”

Luther was sorry he had missed that. He had a strong hunch that Callie’s “war stories” would be varied and fascinating.

Callie finished with a shrug, saying, “You were up on your feet by the afternoon, first using a makeshift crutch and then pretty much under your own steam. Even took a hot shower last night, and if you needed help, you didn’t ask.” She lifted her coffee cup in a slight salute. “So you do heal faster than the average bear.”

He grunted. “So where were we headed? Before.”

“My idea. In hindsight, not a good one. But among other things, I was bothered by that blood I’d found, and that plus the dogs’ fear of Jacoby made me curious. I wanted to find out if that negative energy around Jacoby’s cabin—or around him—was closer than it had been before.”

“I think we can safely say it was. We were no more than a few hundred yards from this cabin when . . . it . . . happened.” Luther felt more than a little grim. “That crack in my shield?”

“I’m assuming that’s why it targeted you, because mine was still up. I’m also assuming that during what happened out there, your memories of all the hours you lost were taken away from you. That’s when it happened, I think. Just like the agents transporting Jacoby.”

“I wonder if either of them turned into a raging maniac first,” Luther muttered.

“Oh, you were too controlled to be a maniac.” Callie’s voice was utterly matter-of-fact. “I had my shields up, but I still got the sense that you were listening to something inside your own mind. Something very clearly telling you to cut my throat.”

“Jesus, don’t remind me.”

She leaned forward, elbows on her knees, and gazed at him steadily. “Look, hard as it is, we have to go over this. You have to remember whatever you can, because we need to understand as much of this as possible. I can’t contact Bishop and Miranda, and I’m not at all sure we should even attempt to hike down the mountain to town, not with that negative energy apparently expanding the way it is.”

“What about your Jeep?”

“That’s one of the other things that was bothering me. When I took Cesar out alone yesterday, one of the reasons was to check on the Jeep. All four tires have been slashed. It’s not going anywhere.”

“Jacoby? He was that close?”

“I don’t know. No definitive evidence it was him. Generally speaking, people up here are respectful of vehicles, since you never know when your life might depend on one. But there’s no way to know for sure it wasn’t pure vandalism by some hunter or . . .”

“Or?”

“There are rumors of a few militia groups scattered about in these mountains. But I’ve never seen any sign of them up here, and I can’t think of a reason why they’d target my Jeep.”

“If they knew you were a fed, it’d be reason enough,” Luther pointed out. “They have no love of the government, and no love of cops. Finding a federal cop parked in what they consider their own territory might at the very least cause them to leave some kind of warning.”

“True. But that assumes they found out somehow. And I’d rather assume they don’t have that kind of intelligence operations. Which is what our intelligence operations have told us.” She smiled faintly. “Stop stalling. What do you remember, Luther? In those minutes before you . . . came back to yourself, what do you remember?”

“Blackness,” he said almost involuntarily. “Like some goddamned alien ooze out of a horror movie inside my head, creeping over my mind, trying to smother it, take it over. And there were voices. Whispers, what seemed like hundreds of them, but all saying the same thing at the same time, almost a chant, all telling me—”

“To kill me.”

“Yeah. To kill you. That I’d have . . . power. Power to do anything I wanted, more than I knew I could do . . .”

“If you killed me.”

Don’t. Don’t let her stop you. Stop us. We have to do this. You know we do. It feels right, doesn’t it? All the strength? All the power surging through you? Making you invincible? And it’s all yours. You’ll be able to do amazing things, Luther. You’ll be able to do anything you want. Anything.

“Luther?”

He looked at her, shoving the stark memory of those seductive promises out of his mind. Hoping they were just memories. “Yeah. That I’d be invincible. If I killed you.”

* * *

COLE JACOBY—OR,
rather, the shell of that man who retained just enough awareness to know who and what he had been before—wiped his brow as he dug the shovel into the ground upright and more or less leaned against it.

He was tired. He didn’t think he’d ever been so tired.

Just a bit more, Cole. Just a bit more, and then you can truly be part of us. You can be one of us.

“I buried her,” he heard himself say sullenly. “What was left of her. All the pieces. Nobody’ll ever find her up here.” He didn’t allow himself to think about what he had done. To her. And not because he didn’t remember, but because he did.

Except it hadn’t been him. It had been like . . . almost like watching a movie. Or being in a nightmare. Something had used his body, his hands, to do those terrible things.

Something that was taking him over, bit by bit.

Something that was going to win.

Because he hadn’t the strength or will to stop it, even if he knew how to try, even if . . . Even if he still cared.

But he was mostly numb.

And mostly just no longer gave a damn.

Yes, you did well. And you felt stronger afterward, didn’t you, Cole?

“I don’t feel strong now.”

It only lasts after you’ve become one with us. After that . . . after that, Cole, you’ll be invincible. You’ll have more power than you can even imagine. All the power you could ever desire.

He had the vague notion that there was something wrong with that offer, the dim understanding that if they . . . it . . . whatever . . . had to use him as a tool, just how powerful could they or it really be? But it was a fleeting thing, that question, gone almost as soon as it appeared, like a wisp of smoke.

“I never wanted power,” he said. “Just money. Just enough money. I didn’t need that . . . what you made me take. What you made it possible for me to take. I never needed that.”

But we did, Cole. We needed it.

“If you have so much power, why do you need money?”

It takes money in your world. To buy . . . necessary things. To buy a safe place. To be left alone.

“I don’t understand.” He really didn’t, but he also didn’t really care.

You will. When the time comes, you’ll understand all of it, Cole. Now spread brush over the grave so it won’t be so obvious. And then go back to the cabin.

“So I can sleep?” he asked yearningly.

For a little while.

* * *

CALLIE LEANED BACK
and sipped her coffee, frowning. “Well, that’s interesting.”

“Interesting? Jesus Christ, Callie.”

“Well, it is. It’s certainly not your average burst of negative energy. This thing definitely has a consciousness. More than one, from the sound of it. Which could explain its strength. And it likely would have been seductive to someone like Jacoby, who wouldn’t have had the mental or emotional strength to resist as you did.”

“I resisted? Because I had my knife to your throat, and that doesn’t sound like resisting to me.”

“I’m still alive. You resisted.”

Luther really didn’t want to talk about this but knew they had to, that she was right about that. “Did you help me, there at the end? To shove that energy out of my mind?”

“I was about to try, even though I didn’t want to drop my shields, but you were able to do it alone.”

“It felt . . . it almost felt like I had help.”

“Not me. I don’t know who else would have done it. Are you connected to anyone else? Linked? Psychically?”

“No.”

Her brows rose slightly. “That sounded definite.”

“It is. Probably like your unit, Haven operatives go through periodic tests and . . . challenges. To find our strengths and our limitations. Whatever may or may not have happened to change my abilities out here, until now I was a touch clairvoyant with a pretty strong shield. Our strongest telepaths had trouble reading me, and the other clairvoyants got nothing.”

“What about empaths? What about Maggie?”

“Maggie says I protect my emotions, consciously or not, so she didn’t probe. No other empath has tried.”

Matter-of-fact, Callie said, “Probably because you’re former military. Most with experiences like yours keep themselves pretty buttoned up emotionally.”

“I suppose,” he said, without saying anything more.

Callie didn’t push. “Well, given that, it had to be your own strength that pushed that black negativity out of your mind.”

Luther suddenly remembered her voice calling his name just before he shoved the blackness out, but he decided to keep that knowledge to himself, since he didn’t quite know what to make of it.

“Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe it was just a test. To see how far I could be pushed. How well I could be controlled. How can we really know either way? All we
can
know is that it got in. In me. And took control of my mind and body.” He paused, then added, “I cannot begin to tell you how creepy and unsettling that is.”

Callie didn’t offer platitudes, just said, “And I can’t understand how that feels—so far, at least. Honestly, I hope I never have firsthand knowledge. Though I can imagine, I think. Question is, what do we do about it? Maybe we
should
take the chance and hike down the mountain. Get you out of range of whatever it is, at least until we can get some backup on scene.”

Luther considered. “How long would it take to reach town?”