Hostage (4 page)

John sighed. “Well, I know better than to ask. You’ll tell us whatever it is you’re holding back if and when you’re ready to. But can you at least put Maggie’s mind to rest and tell her Luther is all right?”

“He’s being taken care of as we speak,” Bishop replied.

* * *

“REMIND ME AGAIN
why we’re doing this?” Hollis Templeton’s voice wasn’t exactly nervous, except around the edges.

Her partner, Reese DeMarco, perfectly aware of the nerves, answered patiently. “Because you told Bishop weeks ago that you wanted to learn to interact with spirits outside our investigations, without the pressures of chasing bad guys.”

“Yeah, but—”

“And our options to do so openly and without our badges are rather limited. Either you’re some kind of paranormal investigator like we were in Baron Hollow in July, which would involve carting along a lot of equipment we don’t need, or else you bill yourself as a medium and offer your services to allow loved ones to talk with the dead.”

“But a
séance
? Seriously?”

“At least Bishop didn’t ask you to wear a turban or a dozen jangling fake gold bracelets.”

Hollis turned her head and glared at him. “You’re not helping.”

DeMarco kept his attention on his driving as he navigated a rather winding mountain country blacktop in the waning twilight. “Sorry. But you did ask, Hollis. And it’s a good idea to explore the limits of your abilities whenever we have time between cases.”

“In theory,” she muttered.

“Well, we don’t have too many ways to explore, to learn to control,” he said. “We spend hours in the lab whenever the researchers come up with new tests, but we all know psychics don’t do well in lab conditions, so we seldom learn anything new about ourselves or our abilities. And then we’re in the field on cases where hunting down the bad guys and staying alive in the process is a little more imperative than learning how to talk to a spirit not involved in the investigation.”

Hollis was silent for a moment, then said, “It was that girl in the hospital when we were waiting to see if Diana would pull through. Wandering the halls, literally a lost soul. It’s been six months since that investigation, and I still can’t get her out of my mind. When she asked me if there was supposed to be a light, I didn’t have an answer for her.
Or
the time to try to help her find the answers she needed.”

“And so, we do this,” DeMarco said patiently. “You talk to spirits without the pressure of an investigation and try to help them. And if the client wants a séance as the setting, so be it.”

“Easy for you to say,” Hollis muttered. “Listen, I’m not going to do the candle thing, or hold hands around the table, or any of that stuff. Certainly no Ouija board; those things are dangerous. And I won’t pretend to go into a trance. If I have to do a séance, it’ll be
my
way.”

“Suits me. Though it might disappoint the client. According to what background info we were given, she’s had readings from every psychic and would-be psychic in about a dozen places in and around Tennessee. Even went all the way to California a couple of months back.”

“Which hasn’t made her brother-in-law very happy. Yeah, I remember from the brief. He thinks she’s wasting money at best and being robbed blind at worst. Not exactly what you’d call a believer.”

“Something else we’ve run into before and will again; might as well practice dealing with that too. In any case, our information is there were no kids and her husband’s brother stands to inherit as the only Alexander left. Maybe he just wants to protect what he believes he has coming to him; some of those psychics charged pretty steep fees.”

“I’m not charging anything at all.”

“Yeah, but I’m betting the brother-in-law doesn’t believe that. He’ll be looking for the hook whatever you say, just waiting for whatever it is you intend to use to draw his sister-in-law into your con and eventually relieve her of some of her—and his—money.”

Hollis frowned. “I hate it when anything is about money. I’m also a little worried about whether I can see this spirit at all. He’s been gone—what?—nearly two years?”

“Nearly.”

“So maybe he’s gone on to wherever most spirits go eventually. Despite popular belief, most of them don’t seem to stick around very long.”

“We’ll find out soon enough,” DeMarco said, turning the car in between two rather imposing brick pillars flanking a brick driveway that wound off into the distance.

Glum, Hollis said, “Dammit, even the driveway cost a fortune. Or was laid back when brick was relatively cheap to use and labor even cheaper. I bet this is an old house. Filled with history. And spirits.”

“Family home for about a century and a half, if I remember.”

“Lovely. Probably lots of feuding went on over the decades. A philandering husband or cheating wife caught and . . . dispatched. A suicide or three. An axe murderer two generations ago.”

With a slight smile, DeMarco said, “Don’t recall mention of an axe murderer.”

“He probably got away with it,” Hollis said, still gloomy. “No bodies found, right? Right. So he buried them in the rose garden or cut them up into little pieces and tossed them into that river we passed a mile or so back. Or fed them to pigs.”

“Ghoulish,” he noted.

“I’m going to talk to the dead. I can be ghoulish if I want to. It does cast a whole new light on bacon, though, doesn’t it? I mean, that pigs are omnivores and will eat anything. It’s why I eat turkey bacon. Mostly.”

Ignoring the tangent, DeMarco said, “It’s not as easy as most people would suppose to dismember a body, especially with an axe. Takes a lot of muscle and quite a bit of skill, never mind making a hell of a mess it’d be difficult to hide or cover up afterward—”

“All right, all right.” Hollis turned her head to stare at him, frowning. “Why don’t you just
tell
me when I’m being an unreasonable pain in the ass?”

“Where’s the fun in that?”

Hollis couldn’t help but laugh a little when he sent her one of his quick, curiously crooked smiles. “Yeah, yeah. Your idea of a nice break between cases is to babysit me.”

“Not exactly the way I think of it,” DeMarco replied, adding immediately, “If there are any spirits at the Alexander family home, they’ll probably be waiting and ready for us. For you. You’re broadcasting.”

She sighed, perfectly aware that controlling that particular psychic ability was not exactly one of her strengths—and useless to even try whenever she was in the company of a telepath as powerful as DeMarco. “Emotions or thoughts?”

“A jumble of both. Hollis, you
can
do this, you know.”

“Yeah? What if another spirit asks me why there’s no light to guide them—wherever it is they’re supposed to go? What do I tell them?”

“Follow your instincts. They’re actually pretty good.”

Hollis didn’t want to admit out loud that she found it reassuring to hear that from him. Then again, since he
was
a telepath and she couldn’t turn off her psychic Broadcast Full Wattage button, he probably knew anyway.

Dammit.

She returned her attention forward just as the car rounded a curve and their destination loomed unnervingly large and very well lit a hundred yards or so ahead.

“Jesus,” she muttered. “It’s a castle. It has turrets.”

“Only two,” DeMarco murmured.

Hollis was too busy dealing with her sense of intimidation and unease to laugh as she studied the house looming ever larger as they approached. Stone, some sections of it covered with ivy, numerous windows with the small panes that usually signaled considerable age, and a huge, grand front door that looked as if it would require a draft horse to pull it open. There were at least three floors, at least two wings in addition to the main section of the house, the two turrets DeMarco had noted—and battlements. Or, at least, what Hollis tentatively identified as battlements. Walkways high up between the turrets at roof level designed for guards to walk and scan the countryside for danger, like the threat of some army storming the place.

Which was very weird for an American structure, very few of which had experienced a threat of that kind since the Alamo.

Besides which, this was a home, not a fortress. She hoped.

“Jesus,” she repeated. “Who
are
these people?”

“Old money,” DeMarco replied succinctly. “And I’m guessing whoever built this place had a lengthy European trip behind them that inspired this sort of architecture.”

“No kidding. Also a family that made damned sure of their privacy. They might not have a moat around the place, but it took us nearly an hour on decent blacktop roads to get here from the main highway, and thirty minutes on that from the nearest town; imagine how long it would have taken anyone a hundred years ago.”

“I doubt they got many visitors,” DeMarco agreed. “And those who came probably stayed a week or longer, even a month. Even a summer. It was common among people of that time—and this sort of wealth.”

“Damn, you don’t think they’ll ask us to stay, do you? If that isn’t a haunted house, I don’t know spirits at all. Other than a hospital, I can’t think of a place I’d feel less inclined to spend the night.”

“I suppose that depends on how long the séance lasts,” DeMarco said practically. “It’s nearly dark, and by the time you’re done it’s likely to be fairly late. Depending on how pleased our hostess is with her reading, always assuming you can make contact, if you can’t tell her what she wants to hear, I bet she’ll want more than one reading.”

“And if I
can
tell her what she wants to hear?”

“In that case, she may try to hire you to be her personal psychic.”

With considerable feeling, Hollis said, “Thank God I already have a job.”

DeMarco parked the car a dozen yards from the front door and said, “Well, right now your other job demands that you try your hand at contacting a spirit, probably only because his nearest and dearest wants to know that he’s at peace—except for missing her as much as she misses him, of course.”

“Cynic.”

“Realist. Come on, let’s go.”

Hollis gathered herself and prepared to get out of the car but couldn’t help muttering a final, “Oh, man, I know I’m going to regret this.”

And it was, really, more than a hunch.

Haven

Maggie Garrett said, “So you’re certain your agent can protect himself. Herself?”

“Herself,” Bishop replied.

“An especially strong shield?”

“And instinctive, or at least unconscious. She doesn’t have to think about it to block, maybe even repel, energy. To most of our other psychics, telepaths included, behind her shield she reads as a sort of . . . null field. As if she’s not really there.”

Maggie murmured, “Psychic stealth mode.”

John said, “Now that sounds creepy.”

“It can be,” Bishop allowed, adding dryly, “Not many people can sneak up on me. She can. But that seems to be more a side effect of her shield than a separate psychic ability. Her real strength is in detecting, measuring, and possibly repelling negative energy. And when she encounters it, she does more than detect it, she becomes hyperaware.”

“What about positive energy?”

“When she lets down her shield—which she has to consciously do—most of our telepaths have been able to communicate with her easily, and with complete thoughts rather than just snippets or impressions, so she’s receptive to positive energy. A small percentage of our telepaths couldn’t send or receive. Anything, even though her shield was down. We’re not sure if it was due to their abilities or hers. Or just one of those days when one or all of them weren’t able to control their abilities.”

“She’s also a telepath?”

“Yeah, she is a telepath, though it seems secondary to both her shielding abilities and her abilities to detect and repel negative energy. So far, at any rate.”

Maggie said, “Three distinct abilities?”

“More like two,” Bishop replied. “Our theory is that her mind developed the shield to protect itself from negative energy, so those two abilities are likely connected. The telepathy began as her primary ability.”

“And the others developed only when she was exposed to negative energy?”

“I believe so,” Bishop said.

Maggie waited a moment, then said, “You’re not going to tell us when and how that happened?”

“That’s her story, part of her history. Not mine to share.”

John sighed, even though he was well aware, and personally grateful, that Bishop kept the secrets of many if not most of the psychics he dealt with—and that he shared such information with others only when it was absolutely necessary. “As usual, we have more questions than answers about an agent or operative’s abilities.”

“Some things don’t change,” Maggie said, then added immediately, “Bishop, did you know Nash had contacted Haven?”

“Yeah.”

“But not from him.”

“No.”

“Have you told him you have an agent in place?”

Bishop replied, “Unless you’ve told him differently, he doesn’t know Cole Jacoby has been located.”

Maggie looked at her husband with raised brows. “Did he answer my question?”

“Not exactly.”

Relenting, Bishop said, “No, I haven’t told Nash—or anyone else outside the SCU—that I have an agent in Tennessee and that she located Jacoby days ago. The instant Nash is informed of Jacoby’s location, he’ll mount a full-scale operation to get his fugitive, with the director’s blessing; everybody wants that ten million found. I’m less concerned with recovering the stolen money than I am with determining the extent of Jacoby’s psychic abilities. For now, at least.”

“And she doesn’t know yet?” Maggie asked.

“Not as of her last report hours ago. She says the whole area around him is dark, and she didn’t mean it was because he’s in a cabin in the woods. Something out there, something in or around Jacoby, is producing a lot of negative energy, but so far she hasn’t risked getting closer to try to figure out whether it’s Jacoby—or something or someone else.”

“Energy with a purpose?” Maggie asked.

“Also something we don’t yet know. But negative energy is usually being channeled or otherwise controlled, especially if it’s confined to one area or person.”