Hostage (22 page)

He remained silent, his gaze scanning the area all around his sister-in-law’s chair.

Anna whispered, “I need to know it’s him.”

Hollis watched that distinguished face soften as he looked down at his widow, and she really, really wished Anna could see what she saw.

Daniel said, “The message I promised to give her is simple. This is no trick, no deception, no con. I am the love of her life, as she is the love of mine. I am always with her, and I always will be. She carries me wherever she goes, not because of my wedding ring, but because I will never wish to be anywhere but at her side.”

Hollis repeated the message carefully, sentence by sentence. And when she finished, she saw Anna relax for the first time. Saw a look of peace and contentment soften her face.

The older woman hooked a finger inside the high neckline of her dress and pulled out a fine chain that was always hidden inside her clothing. Hanging on the chain was a man’s wide gold wedding band.

“Thank you,” she said to Hollis.

“My pleasure.” Hollis looked up at Daniel. “If I could give her the gift of seeing you, hearing your voice, I would.”

“I know. But you gave her peace, Miss—Hollis. You gave her peace. Thank you for that.”

“I’m glad I could help.”

“Tell her I want her to enjoy her life. To travel, make new friends, whatever makes her happy. We’ll be together again when it’s time.”

“I’ll tell her.”

He bowed his head slightly, looked down at his widow with another of those loving smiles, then slowly faded away.

“No light,” Hollis said to DeMarco. “You see now why I find all this a little bit confusing. Sometimes a light, sometimes not.”

“I don’t think he’s going anywhere.” DeMarco looked at Anna with a slight smile. “He really is always with you. But he wants you to be happy and enjoy your life. Stop running around looking for psychics to tell you what you’ve always known.”

“You’re tampering with the text,” Hollis muttered.

DeMarco sent her a look but continued to smile at Anna. She returned the smile, then got to her feet, keeping the two men seated with a curiously elegant gesture.

“I think I’ll go to my rooms and rest a bit before dinner. It’s been a . . . very eventful day. I’ll see you all later.”

When the door closed behind her, Owen sighed rather heavily. “Well, at least now maybe she’ll be content. I can thank you for that, and with all sincerity.”

Hollis eyed him. “You’re welcome. Still not convinced I really saw Jamie Bell?”

His expression didn’t change. “I think . . . the message got through. And like my sister-in-law, I can at least know a kind of peace.”

She shrugged. “Well, I’ll take that. I’m not out to convince the world I’m a genuine medium, Owen. And we have enjoyed your hospitality. Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.” He got to his feet, adding, “I think I’ll go make a few calls before dinner. See you then.”

Hollis watched the door close behind
him
, and then said to DeMarco, “Isn’t it fun, being a medium?”

With more expression on his face than was usual for him, he replied, “So far, not loving it. Unnerving.”

“Yeah, well, just wait until—” She watched as Brooke suddenly appeared, and she almost laughed as, out of the corner of her eye, she saw her partner start in surprise.

“Where have
you
been?” she demanded. “I thought you were going to help me learn about being a medium.”

“I’ve been near all the time,” Brooke said, rather absently. “You were doing fine, you didn’t need my help.”

“I might,” DeMarco muttered.

Brooke looked at him, then at Hollis. “You’re going to enjoy this, aren’t you?”

“Bet your ass.” Hollis saw DeMarco shift a bit and said to him, “Trust me, she may look like a kid, but she’s older than both of us.”

“I really am,” Brooke said to him. Then she frowned and added, “I’m sorry. You’re remembering the Brooke I was. At the Church.”

Hollis half closed her eyes. “Damn, I’d forgotten that. Sorry, Reese.”

“Unnerving,” he said to her, eyeing Brooke. “I didn’t know her, really, just to see her. Still . . .”

Brooke waved a hand, her gesture as curiously elegant as Anna’s had been. “Stop feeling guilty about that. And talking about me as if I weren’t here.”

“Excuse me,” DeMarco murmured.

Brisk now, Brooke said, “Because we have other things to talk about.”

“Such as?” Hollis asked politely.

“Well, two things. Bishop’s on his way. And then there’s the money.”

“What money?”

“The nearly ten million dollars that Owen Alexander has been hiding for Anna’s younger half brother. The half brother who hadn’t known she existed until he stumbled on the information while he was bored and researching his own past. So many people can’t resist using the Net to see what’s been printed or written about them. He uncovered more than he expected to find.”

“Brooke,” Hollis began, not even sure what she was going to ask.

“And discovered even more when he came here looking for her. And found Owen instead.”

FIFTEEN

Callie had drifted in and out for some time she couldn’t measure. Sometimes painful things were being done to her. Sometimes voices talked over her, one of them rather harsh and impatient. And sometimes there was just peace broken only by mechanical-sounding clicks and whirs and beeps.

And an occasional soft whine that was familiar.

She had no idea how long she’d been out of it, and she was a bit fuzzy on the events that had occurred before she had lost consciousness.

I was shot. By an arrow. Because I was dumb, mostly. Luther . . . patched me up as best he could. And then . . . I was on the litter? Long way to . . . Jacoby’s cabin. I think. What then? Don’t remember.

When she finally forced open her eyes, the first thing she realized was that Cesar was lying beside her on the bed. The hospital bed. He was mostly alongside her legs, which put his big head at just about her hip level.

The whine she had recognized was him. Worried about her.

She moved her hand, finding just enough energy to lift it and place it on the broad head of her anxious dog.

“Hey, boy.”

Scare me. Don’t.

“Sorry.” She saw the IV taped to her hand and frowned a little, her gaze following the tubing up to a bag of clear liquid.

“So you’re finally back with us. Don’t ever scare me like that again.”

Callie turned her head and saw Luther sitting in a chair on the other side of the bed. His face was calm, but . . . haggard. Weary.

Beyond him, to her surprise, she saw squeezed into a corner a long couch with a rather loud print fabric, and on it in a pile were Jacoby’s three dogs, sound asleep.

She returned her gaze to Luther, brows lifting in a mute question.

“They bend the rules in small-town clinics,” he told her. “Cesar wasn’t about to leave you, which nobody here decided to argue about, though he stopped himself outside the operating room and waited there patiently until they wheeled you out. And the other three decided the same, or followed his lead. Whichever. Point is, they’re allowed. Besides, there’s only one other patient here at the moment, recovering from an appendectomy, and she’s at the other end of the building. We moved that god-awful couch in from the waiting room so the dogs would have a place to nap. Rugs are frowned upon, apparently, as tripping hazards.”

He paused, then said, “The docs here approved your work on me, just so you know. Other than a fresh bandage, I was good to go. Your wound was a bit trickier, because as it turned out, that arrow nicked an artery. That’s why you lost so much blood. But they were able to repair the tear and replace at least some of the blood you lost. You can probably walk out of here in a couple of days.”

Callie absorbed that. Now that she was awake, she felt surprisingly well, so apparently the long sleep had done her good.

“Here.” He was holding a glass with a straw in front of her. “Some water. Your throat is probably too dry to try talking.”

She sipped the water, feeling her indeed dry and slightly sore throat relax. After that, she was able to ask the question uppermost in her mind, even if a bit huskily.

“Jacoby?”

“Dead.” Without going into details about that, Luther continued in a slightly wry voice. “While the docs were working on you, I talked to the sheriff. Despite what you said, it appears he’s enjoying the unusual excitement in his town, even with retirement looming. Said it was the most interesting his job had ever been, and he only wished he’d known what was happening sooner. Mind you, he doesn’t have to be up on the mountain with the feds and search teams who’ve been at it since dawn, and he did show the requisite sober regret for the girl even if she wasn’t a local, but—”

“They found her?”

“Yeah, a couple of hours ago. Just as you said, in a shallow grave, and . . . dismembered. Well, actually cut into smaller pieces. No local or even regional missing girl or woman matching the general description of her face, hair and eye color. They’re comparing that info to missing-person reports, female, all up and down the Blue Ridge and into adjoining states, but it’s a long list. In the meantime, they’ll run her fingerprints, try to match dental records or, failing that, DNA. I’m told it could take weeks, though the feds sent everything to their lab and say it should be quicker than that, at least if her prints or DNA are on file. In the meantime, there’s an army up on the mountain, some looking for more bodies nobody wants to find, and some looking for the stolen money everybody wants to find. And a few still processing the section of mine shaft Jacoby used for his torture chamber; it’s a couple hundred yards higher up from his cabin. I got a description from one of the feds, and that’s all I want. Don’t need to see the place.

“It’s late morning on Saturday, if you’re wondering. We got here last night, almost entirely thanks to Cesar. He ran in front of the truck, showing me the way through that insane tangle of old mining and logging roads. Without his help, we’d still be up there on the mountain. And you’d likely be dead. The docs here told me if we’d gotten to the clinic even an hour later, you likely wouldn’t have made it.”

Callie absorbed all
that
, her hand resting on Cesar’s head, fingers absently pulling gently on his silky ears.

Thanks, pal.

Happy.

Luther cocked his head, looking back and forth from her to her dog. “You two really do communicate. Telepathically?”

“Something like that. Picking up on it?”

“I think so.” He was cautious. “I’m still getting used to this stuff, but there’ve been a few times since yesterday I caught what seemed to be a word or two, and it didn’t seem . . . like a person.”

“No, his thoughts are different. Partly emotional. Sometimes concepts more than words. With other dogs, like Jacoby’s three, it’s almost entirely emotion, and really unfocused. They haven’t worked with a telepath the way Cesar’s worked with me his whole life. He’s learned to use words to express his thoughts and emotions. They don’t know how to do that. At least, not yet.”

“Planning on working with them, are you?”

“Maybe. Probably. Though I’m not sure about the details. I travel a lot. Cesar travels with me, but four dogs traveling with me would probably be a bit much.”

“Well, I had a feeling you’d want to find them a safe home. I called Maggie at Haven. There are already several dogs, at the main house and throughout the compound. Most are pets of operatives or employees; some belong to Maggie and John. Big place, kind people, lots of acreage on which to safely run if that’s what they like. Maggie said they’re welcome.”

He paused, then added, “And you’d be welcome to visit them as often as you like. Work with them yourself, or teach one or two Haven operatives how to do it.”

“Like you?”

Luther met her gaze, his own a little amused and something else. “Haven has plenty of telepaths, and so does the SCU. But telepaths who can communicate with animals . . . Let’s just say that opens up interesting possibilities. After witnessing firsthand the sort of things Cesar can do, the kind of help he can offer in dangerous situations—because guiding me off the mountain was his idea, not mine—I’m fairly anxious to learn more about those interesting possibilities.”

Callie nodded slowly, thoughtfully. “I imagine Bishop would give me time to spend at Haven so we could explore those possibilities. I mean, bound to be helpful to have more investigative tools for the toolbox.”

“That was my thinking.”

“I imagine we can work something out.”

It was Luther’s turn to nod, gravely. “For the sake of psychic research if nothing else.”

“Absolutely.”

Flirting?
Cesar wanted to know.

Callie was momentarily startled, since it wasn’t a word or even a concept that she had worked on with her dog. But she supposed it was certainly possible he had picked up the concept on his own. Because he was a very smart dog, and he was acutely observant when it came to the subtleties of human behavior.

Not subtle.

She stared at her relaxed dog for a moment, gazing into calm brown eyes, then returned her attention to Luther as he laughed.

“No, not subtle at all. I suppose we can work on that. Or just not bother.”

“It’s been less than a week,” she pointed out.

“It’s been a lifetime. Two lifetimes. You have to admit, a lot was packed into the last few days. You saved my life. Cesar and I saved yours. I think there’s a Chinese proverb or something about a saved life belonging to you. So, in our case—”

“Don’t you dare,” Callie said, trying not to laugh.

“It’s a three-way,” he said with unexpected and rather beguiling humor. “Though that can stay just between us. Assuming Cesar gets it and agrees to keep it to himself.”

Agree.
Cesar closed his eyes with a sigh, able to relax at last and get some sleep, tuning out the humans who, at their cores, were utterly certain they were his guardians and not the other way around.

Amusing creatures, humans.

* * *

BISHOP EMERGED FROM
the mine shaft’s narrow door—the door put into place and heavily barred decades ago when this shaft had been closed—and Tony didn’t have to ask; whatever he’d seen inside had been bad. The scar on the left side of Bishop’s face, usually almost invisible, was pale in contrast to his tan, and a sure sign of emotional turmoil that was otherwise hidden.

Since this was not, technically, their investigation, or at least not one Tony had been involved in, he had elected to remain outside and had been watching searchers, some with cadaver dogs, combing the mountain slope all around the mine shaft.

Now, as their unit chief joined him, Tony merely asked, “Do you think they’ll find more bodies?”

Bishop shook his head once. “I don’t think there was time. Cole Jacoby wasn’t a killer, and this wasn’t about killing. I doubt he was even consciously aware of doing what he did. Judging by what was found in the shaft, the girl was a hiker. She made two bad mistakes; she went hiking alone and she went hiking in this area. She was a victim of opportunity, almost dropped in Jacoby’s lap.”

“If it wasn’t about killing—”

“It was about increasing the level of negative energy he was able to channel.”

“So he—or, rather, it—could open this side of the vortex?”

“Yeah.”

Tony thought about it. “So weren’t you taking a chance having Hollis on the other side of the vortex? I mean, I get that you believed only a powerful medium could have closed that end, and in such a way as to get rid of a lot of the dark energy, but with her there it was a certainty that she’d draw even more energy to gather all around her.”

“It was a chance we had to take.”

“You were counting on Callie and Luther being able to keep Jacoby distracted just long enough.”

“Something like that.”

Tony eyed him. “You knew both of them would be wounded.” It really wasn’t a question.

“Some things have to happen just the way they happen.”

“So whoever you and Haven sent here was going to get hurt?”

“Callie and Luther needed to be here.”

Too accustomed to uninformative replies, Tony sighed and said, “Well, both teams got the job done. But didn’t Maggie warn you that Luther might not be all that pleased by how things went down?”

“Luther met Callie.” Bishop turned and began to head back down the slope. “Let’s go, Tony.”

“It sounds like a line in a song,” Tony complained, following him. “Luther met Callie. That had to happen too, huh?”

“It had to happen here.”

“You going to tell them that?”

“Of course not.”

Since the slope was treacherous in places, Tony concentrated on not falling on his ass, not speaking again until they reached their Jeep, parked on one of the old logging roads.

“I still don’t get where the money ties in to everything,” he complained as he climbed in the passenger side. “It was awfully convenient that Jacoby stumbled on both sides of a vortex.”

Bishop started the Jeep and guided it through the crowd of other vehicles, then turned toward town, as usual finding his way easily despite the confusing network of dirt roads and sometimes hardly more than paths crisscrossing each other.

“Boss?”

After a moment, Bishop said, “Energy affects most of us, you know that. In an inexperienced or latent psychic, the right kind of energy can guide or even control the psychic on an unconscious level.”

“He was being controlled all along?”

“I doubt that Jacoby was anywhere near powerful enough himself to have stolen time and memories from two agents.”

“And before that?”

“The seeds were probably planted before he was caught, and likely even before the robbery. It was far too ambitious a heist for him based on his history and known skills. And there were too many little glitches in the building’s security systems that helped him pull it off.”

“Glitches caused by energy?”

“No way to prove it, but I’m guessing yes.”

“But that would mean there was energy involved long before he put the two agents out.”

“Yes. He suffered a head injury during a fairly brief prison stay when he was quite a bit younger.”

“And head injuries often turn latents into active psychics.”

Bishop nodded. “He might never have been aware of the change in him. But since it probably started in prison, it’s virtually certain that the first energy he was exposed to as an active psychic was negative energy.”

“Yeah, I remember Callie talking about how negative the energy is in prisons. Worse than just about any other place, she said.”

“And strong. I doubt Jacoby could have resisted, even if he’d known what was happening to him.”

Tony thought about that, hanging on as the Jeep bumped its way over the rough logging road. “So it was no coincidence that Jacoby just happened to rent a cabin built literally on top of one end of an energy vortex.”

“There are no coincidences. The dark energy was already in him when a bored prisoner looked up information on himself and discovered a half sister he hadn’t known about.”

“He had Internet access in prison?”