Kay Hooper - Sense Of Evil

“And when you could finally speak again? You didn’t tell anyone, did you?”

“Not even the trauma expert-shrink-I saw for nearly a year afterward. I went to live with an aunt while I finished high school. Another school, needless to say. In another neighborhood.”

“Where no one knew.”

Isabel sighed. “Where no one knew. My aunt was very kind, and I loved her, but I never told her about the voices. At first because I was afraid they’d lock me up. Then, later, when I began reading up on what little information I could find on psychic abilities, because I didn’t think anyone would believe me.”

“Until you met Bishop.”

“Until I met Bishop. By then, the only thing I was sure of was that there had to be a reason I could do what I did, a reason why I heard the voices. A reason why that evil hadn’t been able to destroy me, hard as it tried.”

“A reason you had survived.”

“Yeah. Because there had to be a reason. They call it survivor’s guilt. You have to get through that, find some purpose in your life. Figure out how you lived when those around you died. And why. I didn’t know those answers.

“I drifted through college until my friend was killed. Julie. She died horribly, suddenly. There one day, gone the next. Before I could even begin to grieve for her, more women were dead and their killer had vanished.”

“The second traumatic event in your life,” Rafe said. “And the second time you encountered evil.”

Isabel nodded. “I hadn’t seen it coming then either, that was what hit me hardest. These voices that told me things never told me I was going to lose my best friend. That was when I decided to become a cop. I still didn’t know how to channel or use the voices-or how to keep myself from being locked away in a padded cell somewhere if I did. But I knew I had to try. I knew I had to look for that evil face. And destroy it when I found it.”

Dana had finally grown tired of Joey’s whining and sent him back to Columbia -but she had also ordered him to make the drive back to Hastings on Sunday morning. And when he whined about that, she reminded him that news was a twenty-four-seven business and if he didn’t like it he could go use his supposed camera skills elsewhere.

As for Dana herself, she had elected to keep her room at the inn. There were several women staying there, including the federal agents, and it felt safer there.

If anywhere could feel safe in Hastings.

Dana didn’t apologize even to herself for being so jumpy, especially since Cheryl Bayne had disappeared. If this maniac was killing anybody who got in his way, anybody who offered a threat to him… then Dana now had two strikes against her. She was blond and she was media.

It was enough to make any woman jumpy, and never mind the additional worry of too many guys prowling around town with guns stuck in their belts, also jumpy as hell-

“Hi.”

Dana nearly came out of her skin. “Christ, don’t do that!”

“Sorry.” Paige Gilbert shrugged apologetically. “Like you, I just came out for ice.” She was holding an ice bucket in one hand.

Dana looked at her own bucket and sighed, continuing around the corner of the hallway to the alcove where the ice machine lived on this floor of the inn. “Why’re you staying here?” she asked the other woman. “You live in Hastings, don’t you?”

“I live alone. So I thought I’d stay here at the inn for the duration.”

Dana scooped ice, then eyed Paige. “But you aren’t a blonde.”

“Neither was-is-Cheryl Bayne. And then there’s the body they found today.”

Wary, Dana said, “I know they found one. Been dead a while, I heard.”

“Yeah.” Paige scooped ice into her bucket and straightened, adding, “My sources claim she was brunette.”

“Brunette.”

“Yeah.”

“Did your source also say she was… tortured?”

“Mangled.”

“The difference being?”

Paige hesitated, then said, “Tortured means she was alive when it happened. Mangled means she was dead.”

“Oh, shit.”

“I’ve got a bottle of scotch in my room. Want some?”

Dana didn’t hesitate. “Bet your ass I do.”

Rafe didn’t push his luck by asking too many questions. He knew Isabel had been exhausted even before the evening began, and by the time she’d confided the unspeakable tragedies in her life, it was obvious what she needed more than anything was sleep and plenty of it.

So he took her back to the inn, some instinct urging him to maintain the physical contact between them as much as possible. He was still holding her hand when they walked up the steps to the wide, old-fashioned porch.

Absently, she said, “This place couldn’t decide what it wanted to be when it grew up-a bed and breakfast or a hotel. I’ve never seen a hybrid quite like it.”

“Rocking chairs on the front porch, but no central dining room,” he agreed. “Strange. But nobody has to share a bathroom, and there’s cable.”

Isabel smiled faintly, looking at him in the yellow glow of the front porch lights. “I think Hollis and I, and a few of the news- people, are the only guests.”

“ Hastings was never a favored tourist destination, just a little town on the way to Columbia. Nothing much to see. But if we manage to stop this guy here, before he slips away again, I have a feeling it’ll put us on the map. For all the wrong reasons, unfortunately.” His fingers tightened around hers. “Isabel… that first evil face you saw. He killed himself, didn’t he? After he thought he’d killed you.”

She nodded. “Left that note I mentioned earlier, explaining what he’d done and why. Then blew his brains out. They found his body draped across my bed. How did you know?”

“Because you never went after him. Once you healed and before your friend was killed, if he hadn’t already been dead, you would have gone looking for him.”

“Maybe.”

“No maybe about it. You would have.”

Her smile went a little crooked. “You’re probably right. And I probably would have gotten myself killed doing it. Anger and vengeance as motives never offer a happy ending. So it’s all for the best that he did the job for me, that evil is as self -destructive as it is destructive. Tips the scale a bit toward the good guys on those rare occasions when evil consumes itself with little or no help from us.”

“That balance thing.”

“Yeah. That balance thing.” She looked down at their clasped hands. “Rafe… what happened to me is something I recovered from, eventually. Physically, even psychologically. I’ve had a few relationships in recent years. Not very successful ones, but that’s probably due as much to my dedication to my job as to any lingering… emotional scars. Or maybe it’s the voices that men along the way haven’t been able to deal with. I do come with lots of baggage.”

“You don’t want me to be afraid to touch you.”

“Stop being so perceptive. It’s unnerving.”

Rafe smiled. “The only thing I’m afraid of, Isabel, is that you still don’t know what it is you want. From me. For yourself. And until you do, taking the wrong step could be the worst possible choice. For the record, I don’t think either of us is the type to consider a quick roll in the hay as a great way to de-stress.”

“No.”

“And neither one of us is a kid. At our age, we should know what we want-or, at least, know what we’re risking by getting involved with each other.”

Isabel eyed him, not without a certain humor. “I’ve always been impulsive as hell. Jump, then look for a place to land. Obviously, you look before you jump.”

“They do say opposites attract.”

“They certainly do.” She sighed. “You’re right, I don’t know what I want. And I have been feeling rattled all day because of the changes in my abilities. Not the best time to make this sort of decision, I guess.”