Кей Хупер - Whisper of Evil

Galen's hesitation was momentary. "Is Nell okay?"

"I don't know."

"How long's she been out?"

"More than an hour."

This time, Galen didn't hesitate. "I'll be right there."

It required no more than two minutes for him to reach the front door, where he found a very grim Max Tanner waiting for him. Galen had been in this situation before, "meeting" for the first time someone he had watched unseen long enough to feel he knew fairly well, but he didn't blame Max for the wariness that was plain to see.

"I'm Galen." He stepped into the house, offering no more than the brief introduction.

"Max." His lips twisted as though Max appreciated the absurdity of introducing himself to this man, but he merely turned and led the way to the living room. "Nell's upstairs, in bed," he added.

"You say she's been out for more than an hour?"

"Yeah. I tried to wake her just before I called you, but couldn't get any kind of response. Pulse and respiration are normal, and her color's good. Better than it was when she collapsed, as a matter of fact."

"Collapsed? It wasn't the usual sort of blackout? There was no warning?"

Facing the other man as they both stood before the cold fireplace, Max said, "No warning at all. We were talking, and she went out literally in the middle of a sentence. I have never seen her go out so fast or hard."

"It's been getting worse," Galen noted slowly. "More blackouts more often. Stronger pain. And I don't think she's been sleeping well at night."

"So I'm right in thinking this isn't normal for her."

Galen looked at him. "We've only worked together a few times, but from what I've been told, no, it isn't normal. Until she returned to Silence, Nell averaged a blackout no more often than every few months. She's been here less than a week, and this makes at least the fourth blackout."

"Is it because she's been using her abilities too often? Pushing herself too hard?"

"I don't know."

"You damned well should know," Max said in a harsh tone just this side of violent. "I know she feels this special unit you all belong to is something that made her life better, but that doesn't give you people the right to push her so goddamned hard — to use her up, burn her out, until she ends up in a coma with her brain fried."

Mildly, Galen said, "In case you hadn't realized it, nobody pushes Nell harder than she pushes herself. And just so you know, it's not really company policy to use tip field agents and then throw them away. Plays hell with the payroll, to say nothing of recruitment."

Max drew a breath and made a visible effort to control his temper and his anxiety. "Maybe not, but even Nell admitted that some psychics risk more than a bullet doing this work. She's obviously one of them."

"True enough. It's also true that we don't know what price Nell might ultimately pay for using her abilities in her work. But she knows the risks. And accepts them."

"Because she's got a fucking death wish."

"Is that what you think?"

Max hesitated, then said, "I think part of her does, yeah. She's convinced she comes from something evil and that her family is cursed. That she's cursed. Doomed to live her life alone in any meaningful sense. Unable to let anybody get close because she's afraid this so-called darkness inside her will hurt whoever she cares about."

Max shook his head. "Coming home just made it worse, since she found the evidence that Adam did kill his wife — and that Hailey was not only involved with sadistic men but might actually be killing them. Some family tree."

Galen debated silently, then said, "Before we came down here, Bishop — you know who Bishop is, right, Chief of the Special Crimes Unit? He told me privately that he was convinced Nell's blackouts were only indirectly caused by her abilities. He believes they have something to do with her past."

"In what way?"

"Well, that's the question. It could be some trauma she's suppressed all these years, some knowledge she hasn't been able to face directly. Probably something that is connected to her abilities, since using them seems quite often to trigger a blackout, though there's no way to be sure until we find out the truth. But the thing is, Bishop said that if he was right about that, and if this investigation somehow made Nell begin to face her past, to examine her roots here, then it would be likely that the blackouts would become more frequent or more severe — as she got closer to whatever it is causing them."

Max was frowning. "Have you reported back about her blackouts coming more often?"

"Yeah. Bishop said to consider whatever she's saying or doing when the blackouts hit. Is there some commonality? A particular place? A certain line of the investigation? Anything to indicate there's something in particular her mind is resisting."

Still frowning, Max said, "I know she blacked out the day she arrived, probably here in the house. She was here today when she blacked out. But she also blacked out at the Patterson house, after one of her visions."

"The first blackout might have been as much stress as anything else," Galen suggested. "Coming home had to be incredibly difficult, especially when she knew one of the things she'd have to do was look for her mother's remains."

"No kidding." Max glanced at his watch. "She's been out an hour and a half now. That's too long."

"We'll give it another half hour. If she's not awake by then and we aren't able to wake her, there is one thing we can try. Another psychic, a telepath, can try to contact her mind directly."

"Would that be you?"

"I'm not a telepath. But we do have another team member here undercover who is." Somewhat dryly, Galen added, "Or you could try. Have you, by the way?"

"I'm not even psychic."

"No, but you're linked to her. Have you tried to use that?"

Max looked both startled and a bit annoyed, and avoided Galen's eyes when he said, "She won't let me in. Won't even let me get close. Sometimes her guard drops and I catch a glimpse, the flicker of a thought, but then — Anyway, how the hell do you know about that?"

"Sorry, but there aren't many secrets among a team of psychics, especially when so many of them are telepaths. Bishop knew she was linked to someone else and had been for quite a while. We guessed it was you."

"Bishop," Max muttered.

Not really surprised by the reaction, Galen said lightly, "I know, he can be a pain in the ass. Very irritating to have to deal with somebody who isn't often wrong. But in case you weren't sure about it, Nell isn't in love with him. He just inspires an incredible brand of loyalty from his agents. I've never seen anything like it, actually. Probably has a lot to do with the fact that he pretty much single-handedly changed their lives."

Max glanced at him, then cleared his throat and changed the subject. "You said we should consider whatever Nell might have been doing or saying when she collapsed, right?"

"It might give us a piece of the puzzle, yeah."

"Okay. Do you happen to know if the earlier blackouts here at the house came with any warning?"

"I'm pretty sure both of them did. I know the second one did, because I talked to her just before, and she warned me one was coming."

"Just the usual blackouts, the sort of thing she's experienced most of her life."

"Right."

"But when she went out at the Patterson house, and again when she went out here today, it was without the kind of warning she was accustomed to. I know she came out of the vision today with a bad headache, but she insisted it wasn't one warning of a blackout. Still, it was bad enough that she was pale and afterward more than once seemed to lose the thread of the conversation." He didn't add that she had also been less guarded, a vulnerability he had taken advantage of by pressing her to talk to him about their relationship. "She seemed… distracted, almost as if she was trying to listen to something."