Кей Хупер - Whisper of Evil

"He touched me," Nell remembered. "Put his hands on either side of my head. Told me it would be all right. That I'd… never have bad dreams."

"To his credit, he did try to make sure of that. But he was only thirteen himself, and his abilities weren't entirely under his control. He didn't really have the skill to do what he tried to do. He couldn't take the memory away from you, but he did manage to hide it from you, lock it in the smallest, darkest corner of your mind. Without even knowing what he was doing, he placed a block there as well, so that anytime you got close to remembering, you'd black out."

"It wasn't the visions?"

Hailey shook her head. "The only reason you so often blacked out after having a vision is that the visions use a part of your mind close to the block. Or maybe it's the same kind of electrical energy, since both the visions and the block come from the Gallagher curse. From our family, our blood."

Nell was silent for a moment, trying to take that in. "Hailey, how do you know all this?"

"Does that matter?"

"I think it does."

Hailey turned her head and gazed off across the field at the lighted house, then looked back at Nell and said, "There's no time. Listen to me, Nell. That darkness you've been afraid of all these years? It isn't you. It was never you. It's Kyle. When he touched your mind, Kyle messed up, he left something of himself there by mistake, some of his energy, I guess, his essence. You were both so young, neither of you able to protect yourselves from that kind of energy, and he went so deep… It's how he was able to make contact again when you came home."

"He's… connected to me? Linked to my mind?"

"Not the way Max is. He can't read your thoughts, never knows what you're thinking or feeling — and if you'll think about it, you'll realize you've never had a sense of him. As another mind, I mean, another person. But he has been able to influence you, even control you, when you were sleeping or unconscious. That was the whisper you heard sometimes. The whisper you've been hearing in your dreams ever since you came back to Silence."

Nell drew a breath and let it out slowly. The fog in her mind seemed to be clearing, but it was still difficult for her to absorb all this. "He's the killer. Kyle is the killer. And he killed all those men… because of you."

With a grimace, Hailey said, "Like father, like son, I guess. Only two kinds of women in the world, according to them. And I turned out to be the wrong kind. He couldn't stand it that someone of his blood had been… tarnished. Spoiled. But for the longest time, he couldn't bring himself to blame me. It was them. Those men. They had corrupted me, and they had to pay for what they'd done to me. So he made sure they did."

"We can stop him, Hailey. We can put him in a cage where he'll never hurt anybody else again."

"Yeah, that'll be great. But we have to catch him first. And I'd rather we did that before he kills Ethan."

Nell was conscious of a chill. "What?"

"That house across the field is Ethan's. Kyle has him inside, and he's planning to kill him. He's just waiting for you."

"Me? That's why he called me out here? To see him kill Ethan?"

"You'll have to ask him why, but I know he's waiting for you. And if you don't reach the house in the next couple of minutes, he'll know something is wrong, and he'll try to get inside your head again. We can't let him do that."

"He will not get inside my head again," Nell said fiercely.

Hailey smiled. "No, he won't. Remembering what he didn't want you to destroyed the block, Nell. And his way in. But if he realizes that before we're ready, we'll lose the element of surprise. That's what they call it, isn't it, in all the detective books? The element of surprise?"

"This isn't a book, dammit."

"Yes, I know. The guns are real." Hailey reached inside her jacket and produced a pistol, holding it rather gingerly as she handed it to Nell. "He didn't let you bring yours, so here. I think the FBI agent should always get the gun, don't you?"

"The FBI — How did you know about that?"

"Never mind now. The point is that you have to get your ass in there, and armed is probably better than not."

Nell automatically checked to make sure the gun was loaded and the safety on, then said, "Why the hell didn't you tell me all the important stuff sooner, so I could call out the troops? I'm at least two miles away from a phone I could use, from any backup. Kyle has a marksman's medal — I remember that from the background check — so even if he does believe I'm under his control, it won't give me much of an edge."

"Just stall him, keep him from killing Ethan. I'm going after that partner of yours."

"Galen is —"

"Not him. The other one."

Nell blinked. "I still want Galen. He's a pit bull when he's pissed. Or even when he isn't."

"I'll see what I can do. In the meantime, you might try calling Max."

"Calling —"

"Oh, hell, you could always call him, even before you two carved your initials in that tree. Call him. You might be surprised how he can help you now that Kyle can't get in."

Nell would have said something to that, but Hailey gave her a somewhat mocking salute and hurried off through the woods back the way they'd come, leaving Nell to mutter to herself.

Hailey had always been able to do this, dammit. Answer only the questions she chose to, manipulate people into doing what she wanted without bothering to explain herself. So damned typical.

Even with the tensions and strains between them, she'd had the knack of carrying Nell along in a rush, overwhelming any objections or protests, do this, do that, hurry now — and Nell always found herself in trouble at the end of it.

There was entirely too much about the situation Nell found bewildering, but as she hurried cautiously across the cultivated field toward the lighted house, the last of the fog cleared from her mind and both her training and instincts finally kicked in.

The situation was definitely not a good one. She was one agent alone, and even if she was well trained and experienced, it would require more than surprise for her to get the upper hand against a psychotic killer who just happened to be not only a cop but also a half-brother.

And psychic.

She needed help.

Maybe Hailey could get the cavalry here quickly enough and maybe not. Nell had to assume the latter and make her plans accordingly, that's what her training and experience told her. She was alone, and —

Was she alone? She thought about that as she crept closer to one of the lighted windows and very cautiously peered through the narrow opening of the curtains and into the house.

The first window showed her nothing but an empty room, what looked like a den. But the second, the living room, was definitely occupied. Ethan was sitting in a dining room chair, his hands cuffed behind him. His head lolled, and Nell could see blood on the side of his face, though from her angle she couldn't tell how bad his injuries were.

Kyle Venable was also in the room. He was at the doorway of the room, leaning against the door frame. There was a length of rope in his hands. He was knotting a noose.

Was that what he intended for Ethan, suicide? If he set it up right, it could certainly make sense. The FBI could provide their profile indicating the killer was a cop, and there was, after all, no solid evidence clearing Ethan. Just Nell's certainty, and if Kyle had brought her here to witness this death, it was unlikely he meant to allow her to live long enough to testify on Ethan's behalf.

A body found with a note, the motives for murder and suicide painfully apparent, and who would question? The sheriff, last of Hailey's lovers still in Silence, killing himself after murdering all the men who had corrupted his love.