Кей Хупер - Blood Ties

“That’s not what you said earlier.”

“Well, it wasn’t exactly something I could be so definite about to Miranda without going into what happened Tuesday night. Which you very clearly didn’t want me to do.”

Damn telepaths.

Hollis drew a breath and let it out slowly. “Okay. Granted. There’s a better than even chance someone has targeted Diana. A chance that person can attack her spirit as well as her body, and maybe even more violently. But… Look, when you pulled me out of the gray time, you weren’t actually in there with us, right?”

He nodded again. “Right. It was more like I reached in an arm to pull you out. I had the sense of coldness, of something… unpleasantly nightmarish. But I wasn’t there. Didn’t see or hear anything.”

“Nightmarish . That’s a good word for a very creepy place.”

“A place Diana is very, very familiar with,” DeMarco reminded her.

“Yes. A place she’s visited most of her life. But you weren’t there. You don’t understand how strange and… lonely… that place really is. How absolutely desolate.”

“Hollis—”

“She’s always gone there with a purpose, to help someone else. I think that’s one reason she’s been strong there, how she’s been able to move through that place or time or whatever it is without being the least bit afraid. But… what if, this time, she knows, Reese? What if she’s in there, stuck in there all alone, and she knows what happened to her?”

“Then I’m sorry for her. But I still don’t know what it is you believe you can do to help her.”

The hell of it was, Hollis didn’t know either. But she also knew she couldn’t just stand by without trying something.

Anything.

ROXANNE WOLF CHECKED the perimeter of Serenade for the fourth time, moving slowly and being very, very thorough. She also had to be extremely cautious—because it was quite dark all around the outskirts of downtown due to the power outage, and because the small town was still playing reluctant host to more cops, more FBI agents, and way too much media, not to mention electric-company crews still working to restore power.

Which meant there were a hell of a lot of unfamiliar faces wandering around, strangers roaming not only the scene of the bomb blast but the entire town, even this late.

Flashlights jabbed through the darkness here and there, several times narrowly missing Roxanne as she slipped through the night.

“I could trip over him and not know it,” she muttered softly.

He could be right in the middle of everything , Gabriel agreed as his twin returned to the roof of a building very near the edge of town, where she had one of the best vantage points possible—and three separate ways down.

“Normally I’d say there was a slim chance,” Roxanne told him. “But not this time. This bastard has balls enough for anything. Hell, he could be carrying a badge of some kind, or be tech support or EMS or one of the media; in all the chaos, who’s going to think about screening I.D.s to make damn sure everybody is who they claim to be?”

Miranda will .

“When she gets back here, sure. But it’ll take way more time than I like to check everybody.” Roxanne raised her binoculars and studied the brightly lit center of downtown. Dozens of cops in various uniforms and nearly as many FBI agents, wearing windbreakers sporting the acronym prominently, were still moving about with clipboards and notebooks and the tools necessary to interview witnesses and collect and tag the evidence literally scattered over two blocks.

The media people remaining this late had been herded into one area at the north end of Main Street, held back from the cops and technicians working the scene by yellow crime-scene tape and several watchful deputies.

The part-time deputies, Roxanne had noted, looked more than a little shell-shocked, but they were clinging to training and doing their best to be professional in the face of chaos none of them could have been prepared to face working in this pleasant small town.

Picture-postcard perfect . Gabe’s voice was wry in her mind. The chamber might want to rethink the advertising .

“Yeah.”

The muted roar of several portable generators powering the big work lights was the loudest sound in the otherwise unnatural quiet of the small town. It set Roxanne’s teeth on edge. She had the restless, skin-crawling uneasiness that warned her something darker than the night was prowling Serenade, and she had learned to trust that very human sense.

Yeah, he’s close. But I can’t quite get him. It’s almost like… there’s too much negative energy blocking me. Interference of some kind. Maybe the violence of the bomb. Or maybe something else .

“Maybe just him. Right in the middle of everything, like you said. Why do I feel like he knows us a hell of a lot better than we know him?”

If he’s been watching long enough, he very well could. He must have found our tracker and ditched his car. Came back here with a different ride. And he’s probably been on foot since then, moving around . We won’t be finding him or his things in a motel room, not again .

“Dammit. I wish Miranda would get back here.”

She’ll be here soon. In the meantime, whatever the other cops and the media are doing, the SCU agents are focusing where they need to. Identifying that staged shooter on the theater’s roof. Although…

“Although what?”

I’m beginning to wonder if that even matters, Rox. Five’ll get you ten when they I.D. the guy they’ll find he was a hunter out in the woods yesterday, maybe last night .

“Because?”

Because those were the clothes he was wearing, because the backpack held minimal rations and camping gear, and because I don’t believe our guy had all that much time to get fancy .

Roxanne shifted a bit to keep her muscles from cramping up but was wary of moving very much, even though it was dark.

“So he found an easy victim and just left him up here with the gun. Makes sense. But…”

But what?

“I sensed the shooter on that roof, Gabe.”

Sure you did — at first, before we got to the old theater building. But by the time we got there, you were already saying what you felt was different, odd .

“Okay, but if I was sensing him because he’d been there, how’d he get off that roof so fast—and get himself positioned at street level at the corner of the courthouse blocks away?”

They knew he’d been there because he had left them a mocking bit of proof: a shell casing, standing neatly on end right there on the concrete—with a circle of red chalk around it just to make sure the dumb-ass police couldn’t possibly miss it.

Bastard.

I don’t know, Rox. I still doubt he took the chance of coming out the way he must have gone in, by the front door. Too many people would have seen him leave. Maybe he had a rope and managed to rappel down the outside of the building while we were inside. He could have come down in that little alley between the theater and the next building over. I doubt anybody would have seen him .

“Maybe—though we didn’t find any sign a grappling hook was used, did we?”

No. But we weren’t really looking for that, were we?

“Point is, I shouldn’t have felt anything at all once the real shooter was off that roof, not if the dead guy was an innocent victim.”

Maybe you were picking up residual energy from the gun , Gabriel offered.

“Yeah. And maybe it was something else.”

Like what?

“I don’t know. But the possibilities are scaring the hell out of me.”