Кей Хупер - Chill Of Fear

Diana nodded, but said, "The way Missy spoke when I was with her, when she said 'we visited Mommy,' was so natural that I'm positive she meant exactly what she said. That the two of us went to visit our mother."

"I believe you," Quentin said. "And I can't think of any reason why she would lie to you. But proving that you and Missy had the same father and mother won't be easy if your father has, for whatever reasons, covered up that fact. That is what you suspect, isn't it? That he did it deliberately?"

Choosing her words carefully, Diana said, "My father is a very powerful man. It's not just money, although he has plenty of that. It's real power. Political connections, even internationally; both his father and grandfather were ambassadors. And his company, the family company, has interests in everything from cutting-edge technology to diamond mines. And offices all over the world."

Quentin nodded. "So... if he wanted to hide a secret..."

"He could pretty much move heaven and earth to hide it. And it would stay hidden."

"Realistically, we wouldn't have much of a shot of digging up that secret, if he buried it deep enough."

"No. And convincing him to talk now won't be easy, not after all these years. He's hardly likely to listen to my... experiences... let alone believe them. In fact, if I tell him what's happened to me here, he's entirely capable of using it against me. The delusional ravings of someone in need of medical care, obviously. He wants me back under the thumbs of his handpicked doctors, medicated until I stop thinking for myself."

"Why?"

She looked up at Quentin, honestly startled. "Why?"

"Yeah. Why would he want that now? What secret would demand such extreme measures?"

"The one that kept me from knowing I had a sister, maybe?"

Quentin chose his words carefully. "Obviously, there's a lot we don't know about this. All I'm saying is that we can't assume anything until we have more information. That Missy's existence was kept from you and that you were under medical care for so many years may have been due to different situations completely unrelated to each other."

"You don't really believe that."

With a sigh, Quentin said, "No, I don't. But I still say we can't assume without more facts."

Diana looked back down at the old cigar box in her lap, absently fingering a rather gaudy costume earring. "Quentin... my mother died in a mental hospital, and if Missy and my own memories are right, both her illness and her death had something to do with paranormal abilities she couldn't control."

"We've always known it was possible," he admitted reluctantly.

"Abilities my father probably believed were simply... manifestations of mental illness."

"Also possible. Maybe even likely. Medical science, especially twenty-five or thirty years ago, tended to view anything it couldn't explain as an illness."

"So what am I supposed to tell him when he gets here? That I can... walk with the dead, and encountered the spirit of my sister on one of those journeys? How do you think he's going to react to that?"

Madison was glad the storm had finally died away. They seemed to bother her more every time, and as for Angelo, he just shook like a leaf, poor little thing.

"It's over now," she told her dog reassuringly.

He whined softly as he stood gazing up at her. Storms always bothered him, but his anxiety had been growing steadily for quite a while now.

"It is over," she told him. "The storm, anyway. And the rest... will be over soon. I promise."

Angelo sat down with a peculiarly human sigh, managing to express even more uneasiness along with his frustration.

Madison looked around the game room, where she and Angelo had waited out the storm and which was, except for them, empty. The whole place was awfully empty, really; it practically echoed.

"It's here," Becca said from the doorway.

Madison wasn't really surprised, but she was worried and didn't try to hide her shiver of fear. "You said Diana wasn't ready yet."

"She'll have to be, won't she?"

"But what if she isn't?"

"I expect he'll help her."

Madison bent down to pick up her little dog, and held him, stroking him to soothe his uneasy whining. "Still, if it's here... bad things will happen, won't they?"

"Usually do. When it's here, I mean."

"Will they find more bones, Becca?"

Becca turned her head slightly, as though listening to some distant sound. Softly, she said, "No, it won't be bones this time. It won't be bones."

"Diana, no one is going to haul you to a mental hospital or put you under medication against your will, no matter how your father reacts. I promise you that."

Her mouth twisted. "Are you going to tell him you're a seer? That the FBI has a whole official unit made up of psychics?"

"It's not a secret." He smiled faintly. "We do our best to avoid undue publicity, but plenty of people in this country know about the SCU. Some very highly respected, powerful people. If he doesn't want to believe you or me, I can offer your father quite a few unimpeachable references, people who will willingly talk to him about their paranormal experiences. Whether or not he believes what they say, he'll have to take it seriously."

"At least seriously enough not to call the guys with the butterfly nets to catch his daughter?"

"That is not going to happen."

"You sound so sure."

"I am sure. Believe me."

Diana almost did. But she knew her father, and her anxiety level hardly diminished. Still, she was able to push the question aside for the moment to ask Quentin another one.

"Anything of interest in that last box?" With nothing else to show for their efforts so far, she had to wonder if the only "signpost" either of them had been intended to see was the photograph of two seemingly ordinary little girls.

Though heaven knew that signpost was sending Diana in a completely unanticipated direction in her life, one she would have thought unbelievable even a few days ago.

Quentin reached into the box and produced what looked like an old journal of some kind, and began flipping through the pages. "Well, well. I'd call this of interest."

The very matter-of-factness of his tone alerted Diana. "What is it?"

"Unless I miss my guess, it's somebody's account of at least a few of this hotel's secrets."

"What?" Diana left her chair and went around the coffee table to join him on the sofa.

"Look at this. The dates aren't in any particular sequence; one page has an entry dated 1976, and the facing page is dated 1998." He indicated the former page, and read aloud, " 'Senator Ryan brought his mistress this trip. We're all under orders to call her Mrs. Ryan, but we know better.' And more of the same. Sounds sort of..."

"Bitchy," Diana supplied.

"I was going to say 'resentful.' "

"That too." Diana was studying the page dated 1998. "And more of the same on this other page. An actress came here to dry out... a senator with a cocaine problem... And what looks like an account of an overheard argument between a wife and her cheating husband."

"I'm guessing someone from the housekeeping staff wrote this."

"Or reported it to whoever wrote this." Diana reached over and turned a few more pages, pausing long enough for both of them to silently read the few lines on each page. "And these are the sort of secrets the housekeeping staff could easily know about just because maids and maintenance personnel are so often present and so seldom noticed. They'd see what was there, even behind closed doors. Mistresses, alcoholism, lovers' quarrels, gambling problems. The underage daughter of a politician sent here to secretly give birth. And look at this — a European prince apparently spent the better part of a month here twenty years ago while his parents worked quietly to extricate him from some very messy legal problems."