Кей Хупер - Hiding in the Shadows

"My doctor. A few women. Dinah."

Still flushed, Faith said to Kane, "I dreamed about the two of you at a beach house somewhere. It has a screened — in porch with a funny-shaped chair, like something from the sixties. It sticks out from all the wicker furniture out there. The house has a fireplace and a spa tub. Lots of books on built-in shelves. And at the end of the walkway to the beach, there's a flag that says, "Just one more day, please!" The house is sort of isolated, with dunes all around it."

Again Bishop looked at Kane questioningly.

Kane met his friend's gaze. "All correct. The house has never been photographed, and we never had guests there. It was redecorated a couple of months before Dinah disappeared, the porch screened in, the fireplace installed. She had the flag made our last trip out. It was a joke between us, because we always wanted just one more day there."

Faith looked back and forth between the two men and said, "Maybe I'm psychic. Does that make sense?"

Still looking at Bishop, Kane said, "You can't tell?

"No"

"Why not?"

Bishop shrugged. "Maybe because of the lack of identity. The lack of self. That sort of emptiness throws up its own barriers. And she's panicked by the memory loss. Trying to protect herself from to anything else that's probably blocking me as well. Completely reasonable on her part, but not very helpful."

"I don't understand," Faith said.

"Noah has a knack," Kane explained. "He calls it a bullshit detector. I call it something more."

Before Faith could ask for more clarification, Kane addressed his friend again, and she forgot all about Bishop's knack.

"It has to be Dinah," Kane said, his voice tight.

"We can't know that," Bishop insisted. "It could just as easily be Faith. People have come out of comas with new and inexplicable abilities."

"Maybe, but we know Dinah is psychic."

"We know." Bishop's voice was patient and careful, the tone of a man unwilling to assume anything or to raise false hopes. "But her abilities worked a different way, Kane. She wasn't a telepath, wasn't able to touch someone else's mind. She was precognitive, able to ... tune in to future events, to predict the turn of a card or the throw of dice. And it wasn't something she could control with any reliability. Maybe she could tell you the phone was about to ring, even who was calling, but she couldn't project memories into someone else's mind. Even the strongest psychic would find that virtually impossible."

"If she were desperate enough, she might be able to. If it mattered, if it meant the difference between life and... and death. She'd find a way, Noah. Dinah would find a way."

"It isn't that simple. Psychic ability has its own kind of rules, Kane. And a seer doesn't become a telepath. Not one psychic in a thousand has dual abilities."

Listening in fascination, Faith began to understand just what Bishop's "bullshit detector" was.

Kane said, "So tell me where Faith's memories are coming from. Either Dinah is sending them, or Faith is somehow tapping in to them. No matter which way you look at it, it means Dinah's alive, Noah. Alive."

His voice was exultant.

At that moment, Faith realized that deep down inside himself, Kane had believed Dinah was dead — and hated himself for giving up hope.

There was a brief silence, and then, with obvious reluctance, Bishop said, "Dinah visited Faith in the hospital a dozen times. Sat by her bed, read to her, talked to her for hours. We can't deny the possibility that she talked about her past with enough detail to plant those images in Faith's mind, even though she was unconscious."

"But..."

"Kane. It's possible... Dinah is somehow able to transmit images to Faith. It's possible Faith came out of the coma with psychic ability, and that, combined with their friendship, is enabling her to reach out to Dinah telepathically. But the most likely explanation is that Faith's subconscious retained everything Dinah said to her with unusual vividness and in remarkable detail."

Kane shook his head and opened his mouth to dispute, deny, refuse to believe — but then Bishop cut in, speaking very softly.

"Past, Kane. All those scenes are from the past. if Dinah was in direct communication with Faith, don't you think she'd be trying to tell us where she is?"

His shoulders slumped, but Kane struggled to hold on to the newfound hope. "Dinah wouldn't have told her about the scar, dammit. How could she know that?"

"It's possible that happened in the hospital. Trying to wake up, and with psychic ability she perhaps didn't know she had, Faith could have reached out telepathically and touched Dinah's mind. She could have gotten all the details and images that way. It's possible."

"Possible," Kane said savagely. "Everything is possible except that Dinah is still alive. Is that what you're telling me?"

"I'm telling you we can't take anything at face value." And then, even softer, "Goddammit, Kane, don't you think I want her to be alive too?"

Faith, watching them in silence, realized with a stab of loneliness and envy that Dinah Leighton must have been a remarkable woman to inspire such strong emotions in these men.

She didn't want to intrude on so naked a moment but was agonizingly aware that she had to.

"There's ... something else," she said as steadily as she could.

Kane turned his head slowly, as if the effort took nearly everything he had. His face was white, his eyes dark. "What?"

She didn't flinch from the harsh question, but her voice began to shake.

"It's ... what made me come looking for you. I fell asleep late this afternoon, and I... I had another dream. Only you weren't in this one. But Dinah was. I'm not sure, but I think it was a basement ... or maybe a warehouse. Walls made of cement blocks, and they looked old, damp. It was cold."

Bishop said, "What was happening?"

Faith shivered; she really didn't want to say what she had to say.

"Dinah was in a chair, I think tied to it somehow. She could barely move. There was more than one person in the room with her, she knew that. Somebody was watching, silently, from the shadows or just out of her sight. And somebody else, a man, was asking her questions, over and over. I didn't see his face and I don't remember what the questions were. I've tried, but... but it's like there was a roaring in my ears and I couldn't hear him clearly. Maybe she couldn't either, I don't know. All I know is that he... he hit her. Again and again."

As though her hand were on him, she could feel Kane tense, all his muscles knotting in a blind, instinctive response, and her voice shook even harder as she finished. "Then everything went black ... and I woke up."

Bishop drew a breath. "You're saying she is, or was, being tortured?"

"I think so. No. I'm sure. It was too real, too hot — terribly vivid, to be anything but the truth. They ... want her to tell them something, and whatever it is, she won't tell them." Faith swallowed hard. "And it's gone on a long time. The questions. The ... punishment. I could feel how exhausted she was. And her pain ... She's hurting so terribly ..." Kane was staring at her with the expression of a man dealt a mortal blow, and she found it easier at that moment to meet Bishop's clearer — if slightly less human-gaze.

"That entire scene, he said, "could have come from some movie or book."

Faith shook her head. "It didn't. You don't understand. I wasn't observing. I was there. I was Dinah, was inside her body, her mind and spirit. I felt her pain and her fear and — and her determination." She lifted her chin and met Bishop's eyes. "There's something I'm absolutely sure of. Dinah won't tell them what they want to know because she's protecting somebody, or believes she is. It's more important to her than her own life."