Кей Хупер - Out of the Shadows

"We have time," Seth reminded her. "I mean, just knowing that my girlfriend can communicate with dead people . . . well, that's a lot to — take in."

"You mean believe."

Seth hesitated, then shrugged. "I don't know, Bonnie. I guess I'd be quicker to believe you'd read the killer's mind to find out where Steve's body was. Maybe that is what I believe, since he was right where that damned board said he'd be. But the other options . . . Talking to the dead? Ghosts? I just don't know how I feel about that."

Bonnie summoned a smile. "Well, like you said, we have time."

Sensing that he'd upset her, Seth put the Ouija board back on its shelf and took her hand. "In case you're wondering about it, it'd take more than finding out you can read minds or talk to ghosts to get rid of me. I told you when we were kids that I was in this for life."

"Yes — but that's a promise I won't hold you to." Her voice was steady. "There are a lot more . . . complications . . . than you realize, Seth. It won't be easy, hitching your fate to mine."

"Who wants easy?" He lifted her hand and kissed it in a rare, graceful gesture. "I just want you. We'll be fine, Bonnie, I keep telling you. More than fine. We'll be great together."

Her smile this time was slow, and caught at his breath and his heart as always. "I know. I know we will."

"Good. Now — why don't we take these games back to the girls' room so they're handy when we need them?"

She nodded, and a minute later they were back out in the hall. But Seth had barely closed the door of the storage room behind them when they heard a muffled thud from inside.

Seth opened the door cautiously, peered inside, then relaxed with a laugh. "One of the games fell. I guess I didn't put it all the way back on the shelf or something. Or maybe the damned things are just haunted."

His tone had been light, but Bonnie frowned. "The Ouija board?"

"Yeah." He went back inside the room to replace the game on its shelf.

Bonnie was on the point of warning him that occurrences like this were rarely as innocent as they seemed, but in the end decided to say nothing. Seth had enough to consider.

But it bothered her. And she put a bit more effort into maintaining her shield, all the same.

Once, Bishop would have listened only to the words expressly designed to wound, and they would have cut him to the bone. He would have believed what she wanted him to believe, and responded in anger, retreating just as she had behind a closed door so that no communication at all could exist between them.

Once.

Her words still cut, but he could sense something else in her, pain or reluctance, even grief. Almost hidden from him in the stillness of her mind, but there and very real. Hardly the emotions of a woman wronged and hell-bent on revenge. And he was no longer that arrogant young man, careless of what he'd understood too late was precious to him. All of it — the hard lessons he had learned then and since then, the long, lonely years without her, his sheer determination, training and experience — combined now to focus his mind on solving a puzzle.

"Revenge, Miranda?" He spoke slowly, thoughtfully.

"Call it what you like."

"Vengefulness isn't part of your nature."

"Don't be too sure of that."

"But I am sure. I'm positive."

"Don't profile me, Bishop."

He smiled. "Why not? It's what I do. So let me tell you what I think about someone who was born Miranda Elaine Daultry. I think that in most ways you're a very direct woman, Miranda. You say what you mean, and when there's a choice you'll always pick the most immediate and straightforward manner of handling a problem — whether or not it's the simplest. You don't postpone unpleasant chores as a rule, preferring to do what has to be done and put it behind you."

"What makes you think it's unpleasant?" she challenged. "They say revenge is sweet."

"Only to a vindictive nature. But there isn't a cruel or hurtful bone in your body. So if you had intended to get even, to strike back at me for how I treated you eight years ago, we'd be long past that by now. You would have gotten it over with in the first ten minutes."

"Maybe I wanted the punishment to fit the crime."

Slowly, still feeling his way through the intuitive process of understanding a unique personality, he said, "No, that's not you. You don't brood about things, don't let them prey on you. My guess would be that once you walked out of my life, everything you felt about me and what had happened was put aside while you got on with the necessary business of building a new life for you and Bonnie."

She was silent, but a flicker in her eyes told him he had scored a hit.

He said, "You tend to count pain as a lesson learned — and move on. Deliberately setting out to hurt someone else is completely alien to you. No, Miranda, you'll never convince me that getting even was ever part of the plan. Not then and not now."

"Never thought I'd have the opportunity," she said. "But once you showed up, well — how could I resist? I'm adaptable, Bishop. I revise my plans when necessary."

He shook his head. "No matter how much of an idiot I was, you valued what we had together. You knew how rare it was, how fragile. And to use your own definition — how intimate. No way would you have opened yourself up to that again just to punish me."

Miranda was silent.

"And there's one final thing," he said. "One thing I know absolutely about you. You don't stop loving someone because they hurt you or disappoint you, not you, Miranda. It's not in your nature. You're still in love with me."

Tony watched the fax begin to come through, and said into the phone, "You guys were fast."

Dryly, Sharon Edwards said, "An autopsy isn't exactly something you want to linger over."

"Guess not. And I also guess you're stuck at the hospital until the storm's over."

"There are worse places to be snowbound."

"If you say so. Just for the record, the cots here are so uncomfortable, I'm actually missing my bed at the Bluebird Lodge. And you know how I feel about that bed."

"Things could be a lot worse."

"Oh, yeah? How?"

"The generator could go. And then you'd be cold and in the dark. It's all a matter of perspective, Tony."

"Yeah, I guess." He glanced at the small TV, which was currently showing a South American beauty pageant whenever the satellite signal could get through the whiteout, and grinned.

"I promised Miranda we'd report in as soon as we finished the post, so make sure she sees it ASAP," Sharon said.

"Anything we didn't already know?" Tony asked, making an effort to be professional while keeping one eye on the swimsuit competition.

"Not really."

"Then I won't disturb her just now."

"Why? Is something going on?"

"Well, let's put it this way. Bishop is in her office, the door is closed — and his transmitter is working at full strength."

"Tension?"

"Oh, boy. He prowled around in here for more than an hour, until it became obvious that Miranda was not coming out of her office. I don't know what's going on, what it was about Liz Hallowell's murder that made Miranda close herself off again, but he's flat-out determined to fix the problem."

"Some problems," Sharon noted, "can't be fixed."

"Don't try to tell Bishop that. I ventured a mild warning, and he nearly took my head off." Tony sighed, and began looking over the faxed autopsy report. "It's probably a good thing that we're all stuck inside until the storm passes. With nothing much else to do, at least they can get things sorted out between them."

"You mean they can try."

"Yeah. They can try."

"You son of a bitch." Miranda spoke quietly.

"Maybe. But I'm right, at least about this." There was no triumph in his voice, just certainty. "Christ, Miranda, you think I don't know you never would have let me get so close again if it wasn't true?"