Кей Хупер - Blood Ties

Quentin eyed her. “Why?”

Miranda’s frown had returned, but this time she appeared to be gazing into the distance at nothing. Or at something only she could see. And it was a long moment before she replied. “Because her abilities are… evolving. Because every case seems to bring a new ability and ramp up the power on an existing one. And that’s faster than we’ve ever known psychic abilities to evolve. It’s unprecedented.”

“She’s been in some unusually intense situations these last months,” Quentin said slowly. “From the beginning, really. Hell, the trigger that made her go active was about as extreme and intense as anything I’ve ever heard of.”

“Yes, she’s clearly a survivor,” Miranda said. {see Touching Evil}

“But?”

“I don’t know that there is a but. Except that the tolerances of the human brain are likely to be higher than those of the human mind.”

Quentin worked that out. “You mean she may not be adjusting to all this quite as easily and completely as she appears to be. Emotionally. Psychologically.”

“That’s exactly what I mean. So I’d rather keep her close for now. So far, every one of these dump sites has been just that, with no evidence that the killer remained behind in the area. At every site so far, we’ve collected evidence, asked a few questions, and explored what turned out to be a few dead ends, then moved on.”

“So… less intensity to trigger something new in Hollis?”

“That,” Miranda said, “would be the theory, yes. It isn’t something we can keep up indefinitely, for obvious reasons, and you and I both know any given situation can change in a heartbeat. And usually does in our investigations. But short of ordering her to take a sabbatical, which would not go over well at all and could do more harm than good, it’s the best temporary solution we’ve been able to come up with.”

“You and Bishop?”

Miranda nodded. “It doesn’t fix the problem—assuming the pace of Hollis’s development as a psychic is a problem rather than her own natural evolution—but we’re hoping it will at least offer her a little breathing space to really come to terms with how much her life has changed. More time to adjust to what’s been happening to her, to work on her investigative skills as well as her psychic ones. Hell, just time to move through her life without feeling there’s a target painted on her forehead.”

“Which she pretty much had during the whole complicated investigation of Samuel and his church.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.” Quentin looked around, suddenly and obviously uneasy. “Great theory, and I really hope it works out. For her sake and for ours. But I’m beginning to think this creepy but calm investigation might be turning into something else. Like one of the more intense ones. Because they should be back by now, shouldn’t they?”

“Nobody said there’d be bears,” Special Agent Hollis Templeton whispered somewhat fiercely.

Special Investigator Diana Brisco kept her gaze fixed on the rather large specimen of black bear foraging in the brush not twenty yards from their present location and whispered back, “It’s the right time of year for them. I think. Spring. They come out of hibernation and start looking for food.”

“Oh, lovely.”

“They usually run from people.”

“You think or you know?”

“I’ve been reading a lot the last year. Catching up. I remember reading that. Also that they can climb trees, and if they do attack it’s useless to fake being dead the way you can with a grizzly bear.”

“I wouldn’t have to fake being dead if a grizzly attacked. Hell, I won’t have to fake being dead if this bear attacks.” Hollis smothered a sigh. “Okay, so what do we do? Wait him out?”

“Might be a while. Looks like he’s found something to eat.”

Hollis watched the bear’s movements for a few moments, then squinted her eyes in an effort to see more clearly through the thicket they were crouched behind and whispered, “Oh, shit.”

Diana had seen it as well. Her weapon, like Hollis’s, was at the ready, and though her experience with the Glock was limited to training and practice, she was somewhat surprised to realize it felt comfortable in her hand. Or, at the very least, familiar. “I say we both aim at that tree about three feet to his left. If that doesn’t spook him into running…”

“It better. Because I don’t want to shoot a bear, Diana.”

“Neither do I. Got a better idea?”

“No. Dammit.” Hollis leveled her own weapon and aimed carefully through the tangle of newly greening brush that was all the cover they had. “On three. One… two… three.”

The two gunshots were virtually simultaneous, sharp and loud in the relative stillness of the forest, and both bullets struck the tree near the bear with dull thuds, sending splinters of bark flying.

The bear, either no stranger to guns or wary enough to take no chances, ran, thankfully away from them, taking the easiest path to lumber with bulky grace down the mountainside.

The two women got to their feet slowly, weapons still held ready, tense until they could no longer see the bear or hear its crashing progress through the underbrush.

Diana finally relaxed and slid her gun into the holster she wore on her hip. With no need to whisper now, she said, “First time I fire my weapon in the field and it’s because of a damn bear. Quentin will never let me hear the end of it.”

“Probably not,” Hollis agreed, holstering her own gun. “Think they heard the shots? Or the echoes?” There had been many of the latter.

“In this kind of terrain? God knows, especially since all of us searching went in different directions. But even if it does feel like we’ve hiked miles, we can’t be more than a few hundred yards from the original site. The others have probably gotten back there by now.”

Hollis checked her cell phone for a signal, even though they had previously discovered no joy in that. Still no joy. She sighed and replaced the cell in the special case worn on the opposite side of her hip from her weapon. “Well, even if some of the others heard the shots, we have no way of verifying that they did, so one of us is going to have to trek back there.”

“While the other stays here and makes sure the bear doesn’t come back and remove… evidence?”

“That would be the correct procedure, under the circumstances.”

“Great.”

Hollis noticed that neither of them had taken a step in the necessary direction to verify that the bear had indeed discovered what they thought it had. Reminding herself that she was a more experienced agent than Diana and therefore the de facto lead investigator between the two of them, she moved around the brush that had sheltered them and made her way carefully to the spot yards away.

Diana silently accompanied her, both of them wary, both keeping one hand on their weapon until they had to pull aside a tangle of brown vines in order to see what they suspected.

The bear had discovered human remains.

The women took a step back and looked at each other. Hollis had no idea whether her own face was as pale as Diana’s but thought it very likely. No matter how many times she’d been forced to view human remains after a violent end, it didn’t get any easier.

Probably a good thing, that .

And she didn’t know which was worse—finding fresh remains or those that had lain out in the elements long enough to have gone through several stages of decomposition, as this one had.

The smell made her stomach churn.

Diana said, “That was some hunch you had. To leave the trail and head in this direction. To come this far. Because otherwise…”