Кей Хупер - Hiding in the Shadows

"Which is all the more reason why we have to be careful now. We have to be sure, Faith. We have to get proof, and it has to stand up in court. Otherwise, you'll never get your justice."

"Justice?" Faith looked at her with an odd little smile. "Yes, of course. Justice."

"Faith..."

The scene shifted dizzily, and she found herself back in that dark, damp room, her wrists bound to the arms of the chair. Her hands were numb, and when she looked down at them through blurred eyes, she saw that the wires had cut into her flesh almost to the bone. Scarlet blood dripped steadily onto the floor.

Idly, she wondered how much she had left.

"Tell me." The man's voice was astonishingly quiet, almost mild. She tried to peer up at him, but the dimness and her swollen eyelids made it impossible to see anything but a shadow looming over her. "All you have to do to stop the pain is tell me what I want to know, Dinah."

Mute, she shook her head wearily.

The closed fist swung at her, the blow so brutal it rocked her head back with almost enough force to break her neck. One more like that, she thought dizzily, and he'll never get his damned answer.

An oath out of the darkness was evidence that the unseen watcher agreed with her.

"Careful!" he growled. "She can't tell me what I want to know if she's dead."

She wanted to point out that it was just a matter of time, that her life was dripping out onto the cold concrete floor, but couldn't allow herself to speak because if she opened her mouth, she would scream. She couldn't scream. Wouldn't scream.

"Just answer the question, Dinah. Just tell us where to find it, and we'll let you go. "

If she'd been able to summon the energy, she would have laughed. Let her go? She was never going to leave this cold, damp room, not on her own two feet. She would never see the sunlight again. Never see Kane again.

Didn't they realize that she knew that?

Another blow, possibly less brutal but at the moment she was no judge of degree; the pain was constant, radiating throughout her body in hot waves. What they had already done to her was killing her; these sadistic blows were merely finishing the job.

"This isn't working," the man doing the actual beating said unemotionally to the watcher. "I told you it wouldn't."

Then start breaking her fingers.

"She won't feel it. Her hands are numb."

"Then start breaking something she will feel..."

The shadow loomed over her, reaching, and Dinah tried desperately to think of something else, anything else ... Kane. Oh, God, Kane, I wish...

Again the scene shifted, and this time she found herself burying down a vaguely familiar halfway.

"Faith?" Dinah caught up with Faith, her frown clear evidence of worry.

"Did you find anything?"

"No," Faith replied. "Nothing. But there'll be another chance to look, sooner or later." Both women kept their voices low, and neither relaxed until they reached the stairwell and hurried down.

"We're running out of time" Dinah said.

"Something else," Faith said. "I think my phone's been tapped.

"What?"

"It's just a feeling, but I think so."

Dinah said nothing for several flights, then, as they reached the parking garage, she grasped Faith's arm to bait her "I've got a feeling too, and it's a bad one. We've gone as far as we can alone, Faith. We need help."

"I don't trust the cops, Dinah, you know that."

"I know that. But there's a federal cop I know I can trust. "

"I trust federal cops even less."

"But you trust me. And I trust him," Dinah said.

Faith bit her lip in indecision, then shook her head. "Not yet, please. I want one more chance to find the evidence we need. It's important to me." It was Dinah's turn to hesitate, but finally she nodded. "Okay, a few more days..."

"A week. I need at least a week."

Obviously against her better judgment, Dinah agreed. "A week then. But after that, I call out the troops. Understand?"

"All right. Now let's get out of here before the wrong person spots us together." They split up just outside the stairwell, each going to her own vehicle quickly and quietly. Faith started her car and watched Dinah's jeep pull out of its parking place; she hesitated a few moments to give the other woman time to leave the garage. The place seemed full of shadows, and, suddenly nervous, she locked her car doors.

Faith glanced at the big purse beside her on the front seat and murmured, "I'm sorry, Dinah. But you'd try to stop me. And I can't let them get away this time. I just can't ..."

Faith opened her eyes with a start, bewildered to find herself on a couch. She was half propped on a pillow and covered with a blanket, and had the confused sense that far too much time had gone by.

"Faith?" Kane sat down on the edge of the couch near her hips and reached to touch her face, his own strained and pale. "Jesus, don't ever do that to me again."

"Do what? What happened?"

"You were out cold," he said. "I asked you to concentrate on trying to reach Dinah, and the next thing I knew you were toppling off the piano bench, limp as a dishrag and completely unresponsive. If it hadn't been for a strong pulse and the fact that you were breathing with no trouble, I would have called EMS."

"How long was I out?"

"More than an hour. It's near midnight." Kane drew a breath and leaned back, his hand falling away from her face. "Noah's told me stories about this. Some of the genuine psychics he's encountered go into a trancelike state in which all the vital signs slow down. As if the body needs to draw on its resources, tap in to whatever energy is available to use those extra senses. That's what seemed to be happening with you, so I didn't interfere. How do you feel? "

Faith took stock of her physical condition and realized she felt all right, just a little tired. Her emotional state, however, was another matter entirely. Going into that "trancelike state" had been like falling into a deep, black hole, and the terror of completely losing her grasp on the here and now was not something she would willingly repeat.

"I'm okay," she said. "But please don't ever ask me to do that again."

Kane nodded, but his eyes were eager. "Did it work? Did you reach Dinah?"

Faith shied away from telling him further details about Dinah being tortured. There was no reason for him to hear that. No reason at all.

Instead, she concentrated on the other two scenes.

"Faith?"

She shook her head. "I didn't reach Dinah the way you mean, the way you wanted me to. There were just ... more flashes, more scenes from the past. But more helpful this time, I think."

"Helpful how? What did you see?" She told him as much as she could remember about the two memories, which seemed to prove that she and Dinah had indeed been working together on some kind of investigation.

She tried to recall all the details, but so much was frustratingly vague, and she was unhappily aware that there were now even more questions. Including the nagging one about what it was she had hidden from Dinah. And how she had been able to hide anything at all if she and Dinah had been able to communicate as easily as Katie claimed.

She's just a little girl, and probably got it only half right ... Faith went still for a moment, wondering if that thought was hers or someone else's. She didn't know, couldn't tell.

"So it must be connected somehow with my past, with what happened in Seattle," she said finally, forcing her mind back. "That must be why I was so determined that they wouldn't get away with it again. We were looking for evidence, and I had found something, something small enough to hide in my purse — and I didn't tell Dinah about it, at least not then."

"And you have no idea what that evidence was?"