Кей Хупер - Out of the Shadows

"If you'll forgive a bad pun — look who's talking." He kissed her, then said, "We won't let anyone harm Bonnie, Miranda. Not in this life or from the next."

"Promise?" Immediately, she shook her head. "No, that's not fair. And not realistic."

Bishop lifted a hand to smooth a strand of her silky black hair from her face. He knew she was right, knew that to make such a promise right now, with everything that was going on around them, was unreasonable and even irrational. But he wasn't very surprised to hear himself say steadily, "I promise, Miranda."

Sunday, January 16

Deputy Sandy Lynch refilled her coffee cup and returned to her desk after a brief look out the window. The wind had finally died down, at least for the moment, and the snow had slowed to

gently drifting flakes; if she'd been a fan of winter wonderlands, she would have loved it. But with a foot or so of snow on the ground and power outages being reported now that people were up and about, it promised to be a difficult, busy day for the Sheriff's Department.

Especially if, as the Weather Service was predicting, the back side of the storm blew through later today.

Sandy sipped her coffee and then rubbed her eyes wearily. Spending most of the night reading old classified ads hadn't been a lot of fun, but at least it had kept her occupied. Not that she really knew what she was looking for. As instructed, she was making a list of similar ads that had run around the time of each of more than a dozen reported disappearances of teens passing through the area. But in doing so, she had noticed that several businesses appeared to run ads all or most of the time — like the paper mill, for instance, which always seemed to need to hire more employees.

The car dealerships and garages also appeared to have a high turnover, the school system always seemed to be looking for bus drivers and janitors, and even the town of Gladstone itself offered a fairly constant stream of opportunities for transient labor such as street cleaning and litter control, grounds maintenance, and various kinds of painting and repairs.

Some time in the wee hours of the night, Sandy had compared some of the old classifieds with those in last week's paper, but nothing of particular interest had jumped out at her. Ads from years ago and those more recent appeared boringly similar.

"Dead bodies one day and paper cuts the next," she muttered sardonically to herself. "Talk about extremes. I just love my job."

The front door opened to admit a gust of really cold air and one FBI agent, and since Sandy's desk was the nearest one occupied beyond the reception area, she got to chase blowing papers around.

"Sorry about that, Deputy," Bishop apologized.

Sandy got off her knees and back into her chair, wishing he didn't make her feel so flustered. "It's okay, Agent Bishop. Agent Harte is back in the conference room."

"Thank you." Bishop nodded courteously with a smile and went on past her desk.

Deputy Brady Shaw waited until the agent disappeared down the hallway before marveling, "Was that an honest-to-God smile? And me without my cameras."

"He's always polite," Sandy objected, ruefully aware of defending a man who could undoubtedly defend himself.

"Yeah, but he doesn't waste smiles — even on you, Sandy. At least he didn't yesterday." Brady nodded judiciously. "The test will be when Sheriff Knight comes in."

"What test?"

"To see if she's smiling too," Brady replied with a grin.

Sandy rolled her eyes and heaved a sigh. "Honestly, you men. Just because he's in a good mood you figure he got lucky last night."

"Give me another reason why he'd be in a good mood," Brady challenged. "We've got a killer running around out there and bodies piling up like cordwood, we're in the middle of a blizzard, the power is failing all over town — and the Bluebird Lodge sucks as a place to stay."

"I'm going back to work now," Sandy announced.

"I'll bet twenty bucks that Sheriff Knight is also in a good mood when she gets here."

"I'm ignoring you."

Brady chuckled. "Just wait and see if I'm not right."

Bishop walked into the conference room to find Tony leaning back with his feet propped on the conference table, and said, "Have you even moved since I left last night?"

"Of course I have." Tony looked at him with bright, speculative eyes.

"Don't even start," Bishop warned.

"I was just going to observe how much benefit there obviously is in a good night's sleep," Tony said innocently. "Last night you were pacing holes in the floor, and this morning you're . . . not nearly as tense."

Dryly, Bishop said, "Tony, you're about as subtle as neon."

Tony laughed. "Okay, okay. Where's Miranda?"

"She went by Dr. Daniels's clinic to talk to Bonnie and take her a few things."

"So the kid's stuck there for the duration?"

"She's safer there." Bishop briefly explained what he and Miranda believed had happened when Bonnie had used the Ouija board the day before.

Sobered, Tony said, "Poor kid. I always thought being mediumistic would be the least fun ability to have, even if it did confirm some kind of existence beyond death."

"It's one of the two abilities with the highest potential danger to the psychic, I know that much."

"What's the other ability? Being able to tap in to the mind of a killer?"

Bishop nodded. "I've known only two psychics with that ability. It killed one of them and damned near killed the other."

"Miranda's sister," Tony realized. "And the other — was that the psychic you told us about last year, the one in North Carolina?"

"Cassie Neill. When that case was over and done with, she had almost totally burned out psychically. It'll be years, if ever, before she regains any of her former abilities."

"You told us it was a good thing, for her."

"Yeah. She'd devoted her entire adult life to using her abilities to help the police, and she was about as close to a total breakdown as anyone I've ever seen. At least now she can have a shot at a normal life."

"Odd how some of us have few problems and others seem to be ... almost punished ... by psychic abilities," Tony mused.

"Why do you think it was so difficult to pull together an effective team of psychics that it took years to do it?" Bishop said. "Finding genuine psychics wasn't the problem; finding genuine psychics who could handle the work consistently was."

"Urn. Which means we could really use someone like Miranda on the team."

Bishop picked up a sheaf of messages from the table. "She has a term of office as sheriff to finish out."

"And then?"

"We haven't talked about it."

Deciding not to push, Tony said, "Probably best to take things a day at a time for now." He saw Bishop frown down at the messages, and added, "You asked last night that the deputies taking phone calls note down any comments or questions about how we were able to find Steve Penman's body. There weren't many calls last night, but lots this morning."

"Have you looked at these?" Bishop asked.

"No, one of the deputies just brought them in a little while ago. Why?"

Grim, Bishop said, "Because the prevailing theory seems to be that we were able to find Penman's body because Liz Hallowell saw it in the tea leaves."

"Oh," Tony said. And then, slowly, "Oh, shit."

"No answer at her house or the store." Miranda cradled the receiver. "She's an early riser, she'd be up by now."

Bishop checked his watch. "Nearly ten. If the weather reports are on target, we'll get the back side of the storm by noon or a little after."

Miranda picked up a clipboard from the conference table and studied it with a frown. "Her house isn't in one of the sections reporting a power outage, but even if it were she'd still have the phone. Damn."