Кей Хупер - Out of the Shadows

He stared at her. "You aren't going to tell me."

"I really am starving, Bishop."

"Have I told you what a stubborn woman you are?"

"Once or twice." She threw back the covers on her side and sat up. "We'll argue about it later. For now, I'm hungry and I'd like to check the Weather Channel just to see what we're in for. And if you want a shower while the water's hot, I'd suggest now, just in case we do lose power."

He watched her gather their scattered clothing and leave it on the foot of the bed, then put on a thick terrycloth robe from the closet.

"I'd forgotten how beautiful you are," he said. "I thought I hadn't, but. . . Jesus. It's like a kick in the stomach."

Amused, she said, "You sweet talker, you." She found a pair of fuzzy cat slippers Bonnie had given her for Christmas and slid her feet into them. They looked absurd but were both comfortable and warm.

He grinned at her. "You still don't give a damn, do you? You're no more impressed by your looks than by your psychic abilities."

"Because I'm not responsible for either one. A genetic roll of the dice is. Ask me about my black belt or sharpshooter medals, or about my ability to finish a crossword puzzle in record time, and I'll brag a little bit."

"I wonder if you would," he mused.

"See you downstairs, Bishop." Halfway there, Miranda realized she was smiling. She had told him the truth: she really wasn't looking beyond the fact that she was glad he was with her right now. She didn't want to think about anything else.

She went into the living room to turn on the TV and got a weird sense of deja vu. For a moment, she paused there, looking around with a frown. There was her shoulder harness hanging over the chair, the gun in it. Several lamps burning. The Ouija board on the coffee table.

She moved close to it, then bent and moved the planchette to the center of the board. She had the nagging sense that something was wrong with this picture, but couldn't figure out what it was. She also couldn't clearly remember last being in this room.

All she recalled was . . . coming home. And then being in bed with Bishop.

"I hope he can fill in a few of the blanks," she murmured to herself, and continued on to the kitchen.

Behind her, the planchette moved slowly back until it was centered over the word NO.

"If you had any sense," Alex told Tony, "you'd go on back to the Lodge and get some sleep."

"I'm a glutton for punishment," Tony agreed. "Besides, it hardly seems worth the bother at this point. The roads are so bad it'd take an hour to get there, and it's nearly two in the morning now. And storms are even less fun when you're all alone, that much I'm sure of."

"Um. Where did you say Dr. Edwards was calling from?"

"From your Dr. Shepherd's house. Not that I bought that old 'we only got this far before the storm stopped us' story. If you ask me, those two would have ended up at his house, storm or no storm."

Alex grunted. "You psychics seem to move awfully fast."

Tony grinned at him. "Think so? Sorry, pal, but it's not such an easy answer. In my experience, psychics actually tend to move more slowly than the average in romantic matters. Being more sensitive than most, we're wary of being hurt."

Alex decided he didn't want to pursue that subject. "Now that the pizza's all gone and we've run out of cheerleading competitions to watch," he said, "and since you don't want to call it a night, what do you say we try to get some work done?"

Tony sighed and propped his feet on the conference table once again, this time directing his attention to the bulletin board rather than the muted television showing weather reports. "It's all right with me. Assuming we can get anything done, which is doubtful. It'll be Monday at the earliest before Quantico can get us a workable list of tire dealerships in the area. And we've got three deputies out there reading through those copies of classified ads looking for a few our missing teens might possibly have replied to. I don't know about you, but I don't want to go down into the basement and hunt through more missing-persons reports, not tonight."

"No, me either. It's not the most cheerful place in the world even without a blizzard."

"So, we're left with brain work. Trying one more time to put the puzzle together." Tony frowned at the bulletin board. "I wonder what it was the killer wanted from Adam Ramsay."

"You think Bishop's right about that?"

"I think he's a damned good profiler even without the psychic edge, and I've learned not to bet against him."

Alex gazed at the bulletin board. "With no more than the boy's bones as evidence, how're we supposed to figure out what might have had value to the killer?"

Tony twisted around to hunt through the stack of files on the table, finally producing a folder containing various interviews and the autopsy report on Adam Ramsay.

"How many times have you looked at that?" Alex asked.

"God knows. But maybe this time I'll see what I've missed every time before."

Alex shrugged and pulled another folder across the table so he could go through it. Before he opened it, however, he said slowly, "What does it say about a town that it might have hidden a monster for years? What does it say about us?"

Tony looked at him soberly. "It says this particular monster isn't wearing horns and a tail to make him easy to spot. They mostly don't, you know. They hide in plain sight, looking pretty much like the rest of us, daring us to see them, to recognize them for what they are. Problem is, even those of us with extra senses have trouble spotting the monsters, so don't beat yourself up about it. But I can tell you this much. When we do find him, his final victim will be this town, because none of you will ever be the same again."

"How did you find me when you got here?" Miranda asked as they sat at the kitchen table with coffee after their meal and listened to the storm wailing.

"Out cold," Bishop replied succinctly. "And I do mean cold. Your body temperature was dropping like a stone." He watched her, aware that she was edgy about something and that these first tentative hours together as lovers might well decide their future. It was the major reason he hadn't pressed her to discover what vision she had seen in the beginning. "Don't you remember?"

She frowned. "I remember coming home, letting myself in. I remember checking the machine out in the hall. And then . . . your voice in my head telling me I was dying."

Wary that she might believe he'd latched on to any excuse to invade her mind, Bishop said, "I found you in the living room, on the floor, as if you'd just fallen. No outward sign of injury. I'm no doctor, but I've seen plenty of dead and dying, Miranda. You were dying. It wasn't just the dropping temperature; your pulse was fading away, respiration slowing. It was like your body was just. . . stopping. Your mind had let go or been cut off somehow, was drifting away, and without it, all your systems were shutting down."

She accepted that only because she didn't have an alternate explanation. "But what caused it to happen? That's what I don't understand."

Bishop hadn't wasted much time in working it all out then, not with Miranda so still and seemingly lifeless. He hadn't thought about anything but getting her back, and had acted instantly and instinctively to do that.

But now he realized that her abrupt collapse was more than a little odd. "I assumed it was because of your shield. That all the energy you had trapped inside all this time had finally burst free. I knew as soon as I touched you that the shield was completely gone; that's how I was able to get through to you."

She got up to refill her coffee cup, still frowning. Instead of returning to the table, she leaned back against the counter near the sink and looked at him steadily. "No, that isn't what happened. I know it's what you were worried about, but I was able to control that energy without letting it damage me. Years of practice. There were side effects, sure — the headaches, for one. But nothing that could have caused that sort of ultimate collapse, and certainly not without warning."