Kay Hooper - Hunting Fear

"If you don't mind."

"Not at all," Tony said politely, getting to his feet. Then he paused. "We just wait and see what happens in North Carolina, then?"

"It's Luke's case. He and Jaylene are calling the shots, and neither of them has asked for help."

"Do you expect them to?"

"No. Not unless…"

"Unless?"

"Unless things get a lot worse."

"You have something specific in mind?"

"No."

Tony sighed as he turned away. "You're a lousy liar, boss." But he didn't ask Bishop to explain what he knew or didn't know.

Because it would have been useless, and because Tony wasn't at all sure he wanted to know what the worst might be.

Samantha was aware of being in a vision, as she was always aware, but this one was different. Try as she might, she couldn't turn her head and look around the room in which Lindsay Graham was held captive. It was as though she were a camera fixed on Lindsay's seated, hooded self, on the spotlight illumination that cast everything around the captive woman into deep shadow.

Sam could hear his voice, hear Lindsay's. Hear, somewhere, a faucet dripping. The hum of the fluorescent lights. And she knew what Lindsay was thinking, feeling.

Which was new and more than a little unsettling.

So was the deep cold she felt, a chill so intense it was as if she'd been dropped into a freezer. The sensation was so powerful and her response so visceral that she wondered how Lindsay and her captor couldn't hear her teeth chattering.

"If I'm going to die," Lindsay was saying steadily, "then why not get it over with?"

"I don't have the ransom yet, of course. The good sheriff could demand to see proof of you alive before he pays up."

Samantha knew that Lindsay was thinking about the investigators' conclusion that this wasn't about money, and she felt immensely relieved when the detective didn't mention that.

Instead, Lindsay said, "Okay, then why do I have to die? Why did any of your victims have to die? The ransom was always paid. I certainly can't identify you, and if a cop can't it's not likely any of the others could have."

"Yes, I know."

"You just like killing, is that it?"

"Ah, Lindsay, you just don't get it. I don't kill-"

Samantha opened her eyes with a gasp, so disoriented that for a long moment she had no idea what had happened. Then she realized she was looking at Lindsay's cruiser, the driver's door open, from a distance of several feet. And from ground level.

"What the hell?" she murmured huskily.

"Take it easy," Lucas said. "Don't try to move for a minute."

Ignoring that advice, Samantha turned her head to look up at him, realizing only then that she was sitting on the pavement and that he, kneeling half behind her, was supporting her. Baffled, she looked down to see that he was holding both her hands, his palms covering hers.

"How did I get out of the car?" It was the only specific thing she could think of to ask.

"I pulled you out."

"How long was I-"

"Forty-two minutes," he told her.

"What?" She realized she was stiff, cold. "It can't have been that long."

"It was."

She frowned down at their hands, vaguely aware that her thoughts were scattered, that she wasn't quite back yet. "Why are you holding my hands like that?"

He released one of her hands, and she found herself staring at a ragged white line across her palm. "What the hell is that?"

"It's called frostnip," he said, covering her hand again with his own warm one. "The first stage of frostbite."

"What?" Was that the only word she knew? "It must be eighty-five degrees out here."

"Nearly ninety," Sheriff Metcalf said.

Samantha jerked her head around in the other direction to see the sheriff and Jaylene standing nearby. He had his arms folded across his chest and looked both skeptical and suspicious. Jaylene was, as usual, serene.

"Hi," Samantha said. "Almost ninety?"

He nodded.

"Then how the hell do I have the beginning of frostbite?"

"You don't know?" he demanded sardonically.

"I'm cold, but-"

"You were holding the steering wheel," Lucas said. "The frost-nip is exactly where it would have been if the wheel had been frozen."

She looked back up at him, then swore under her breath and struggled to sit upright without his help. He let her go without protest but remained kneeling where he was as she twisted around so she could see all three of them.

Flexing her fingers, she realized that the white streaks across her palms were numb.

"Tuck your hands under your arms," Lucas advised. "You have to warm the area."

Samantha badly wanted to get up off the ground and stand on her own two feet but had a feeling that if she tried that too soon, she'd only find herself leaning heavily on Lucas for support. So she crossed her arms over her breasts and tucked her hands underneath to help warm them.

"It doesn't make sense," she told him, trying to gather her scattered thoughts. "It wasn't cold there. Lindsay wasn't cold. So why would I-"

"Lindsay?" Metcalf took a step toward her, then brought himself up short.

Perfectly aware that while he was eager to hear about Lindsay he was unlikely to believe what Samantha told him, she said,

"She's okay, at least for now. Tied to a chair and wearing some kind of hood over her head, but okay. She was even talking to him. Trying to find a weakness she could use."

"Sounds like her," Metcalf said, again almost involuntarily.

"Did you see or hear anything helpful?" Jaylene asked.

"I don't think so. There was a kind of spotlight over the chair so the rest of the room was in shadow. I never saw him, and his voice was so… bland… I doubt I'd recognize it if he spoke to me right now."

"Did you get a sense of the place?" Lucas asked.

Samantha tried hard to concentrate, to remember. "Not really. The hum of the lights, a faucet dripping, the sort of deadened echo you get in an underground room with a lot of hard surfaces."

"Underground?"

"I think so. It felt that way."

"You didn't see any windows?"

"No. Nothing reflective. Just that light shining down on her, and the rest of the room in shadows."

"What else?"

"She was asking him why he killed his victims when they couldn't identify him. He started to answer her, saying she didn't understand, that he didn't kill-something. But I never heard the end of what he was saying, I guess because you pulled me out."

His tone more one of explanation than of excuse, Lucas said, "You were white as a sheet and shivering, and you had a death grip on that steering wheel. It didn't look like a normal vision to me."

Metcalf snorted. "Normal vision?"

Samantha ignored him, saying to Lucas, "It didn't feel like a normal one. I couldn't seem to move, to look anywhere else but at Lindsay. That's never happened before."

Lucas nodded, but instead of commenting got to his feet and helped her up. "We still need a place to start. If you didn't see or hear anything helpful-"

Remembering, Samantha said, "He told Lindsay he didn't have any connection to this town, that it was one reason he felt safe in sticking around. But he has to be living somewhere. And there must be a place he kept Callahan and where he has Lindsay now. If I had to guess, I'd say you're looking for at least two different places. Where he lives, and where he keeps them."

"Somewhere private," Lucas said. "Where he can hold his victims without too much fear of discovery."

Jaylene said, "Sounds like a place to start."

Still looking at Lucas, Samantha said, "That's what you asked for. And it's all I can do. I don't see any reason for me to return to the sheriff's department. So, if you wouldn't mind dropping me back at the carnival before you get started with your search, I'd appreciate it."