Kay Hooper - Sense Of Evil

“If so, we may never find them. We’ve got people set to start checking out all the other area banks tomorrow, right?”

“Yeah. With pictures of Jamie and the information that she could have been disguised and using an alias.”

“And it seemed like such a nice little town,” Hollis said.

Mallory leaned back in her chair with a sigh. “I always thought so.”

“You grew up here, I think you said.”

“Yeah. Well, from the time I was about thirteen. Both my parents and a brother still live in the area. I thought about leaving when I was in college, but… I like it here. Or did. Never knew how many people kept nasty secrets until I became a cop.”

“It’s been an eye-opener for me too,” Hollis confessed. “Still, this sort of thing has got to be unusual for small towns. I mean, a dominatrix practicing her… art… for paying clients, while also working as a top real-estate agent?”

“If it’s not unusual, I’m moving.”

“I don’t blame you a bit for that.”

“You know, she picked a good public job to hide a private second one,” Mallory mused. “Real-estate agents often keep erratic hours, so nobody would question if she wasn’t in the office at any given time. She could probably meet clients day or night, accommodate their schedules easily.”

“And since she was the dominant,” Hollis said, “she could probably take on as many clients as her energy allowed. No need to take a day or week off now and again to allow those ugly bruises and burns to heal. Or whatever else there might be. She’d be the one dealing out the punishment. Jesus.”

Hearing the distaste in the other woman’s voice, Mallory grimaced in agreement. “A very twisted way to find pleasure, if you ask me.”

Ginny joined them in time to get the gist of the conversation, saying, “The things people get up to behind closed doors. We’ve found Rose Helton.”

“Alive and well, I gather?” Mallory said.

“Definitely alive. I’d say pissed rather than well. When I told her that her husband was sleeping it off in a cell after having waved his gun around at the chief and two federal agents, she said she hoped the judge would throw away the key.”

“Where is she?” Hollis asked.

“In Charleston, with a college friend.”

“She went to college?” Mallory asked in surprise. “And still married Tim Helton?”

Pronouncing the words carefully, Ginny said, “She said it had been a cosmic karmic mistake. And that she’d already filed for divorce and wasn’t coming back here. And, oh, by the way, in case we hadn’t found it, there was also a still in an old shed in the back pasture.”

“We found it,” Hollis murmured.

“Everybody said they were so happy.” Mallory shook her head. “Christ, you really don’t know about people.”

Hollis said, “Well, anyway, we can cross her off the missing list.”

“One less to worry about,” Ginny agreed.

“How’s the rest of the list coming?” Mallory asked her.

“No change. No sign of Cheryl Bayne. Plus, we still have several women missing in the general area, and nothing new on Kate Murphy.” Ginny sighed, clearly weary. “It’s like she disappeared into thin air. She fits right in with the other victims too.”

“But not Cheryl Bayne.”

Hollis said, “I think Isabel’s probably right about Cheryl. If the killer got her, it wasn’t specifically because she was-is-a reporter, but because she somehow got too close. Or he was afraid she had. And if so, it’s only going to get more difficult to even try to predict what he might do next.”

“Except kill,” Mallory offered wryly.

It was Hollis’s turn to rub the back of her neck. “And there’s something else. Isabel’s the profiler, but I’ve got to say, if Kate Murphy is a victim, why haven’t we found her? So far, the rule’s been that if he kills them, he does it quick and leaves them out in the open where they’re easily found. Assuming he has killed again, or that he has Kate Murphy, why would he change his M.O. now?”

“Our patrols are checking out every highway rest stop,” Ginny said. “Most of them two or three times a day.”

“Maybe we’ve spooked him,” Mallory suggested. “He could be killing and leaving the bodies in places we aren’t keeping under observation.”

Hollis glanced toward the closed door of the conference room. “Maybe it’s time we discussed that possibility.”

Mallory didn’t move. “Rafe had a sort of determined look on his face when he closed the door. I’m not so sure I want to be the one to disturb them.”

Hollis continued to look at the door intently, focusing, tentatively trying out the spider sense. After a long moment, she said, “Um… let’s give them a few more minutes.”

“You’re serious?” Rafe leaned forward and touched her hand, not even reacting now to the spark.

Isabel looked down at their hands for a moment, then back at his face. “Entirely serious. For the first time in more than fourteen years, there’s silence in my head.”

“That’s what’s been wrong all day.”

“That’s it,” she said, unsurprised that he had noticed. “The question is: why?”

They both looked down at their touching hands, and Rafe said, “Frontier territory, huh?”

“Yeah. Scary, isn’t it?”

“Today, looking at the wrong end of a gun being waved around by a paranoid drunk, was scary. This? This is just a very interesting turn my life has taken.”

“You’re a very unusual man,” she said.

“Which is probably a good thing,” he said, “considering that you’re a very unusual woman.”

There was a part of Isabel that wanted to shy away, to pretend he hadn’t said that or that she hadn’t understood what he meant. But Isabel didn’t let herself shy away, or draw away, or back away. Whatever this was, it was something she had to deal with.

“Rafe, do you realize what this could mean?”

“Static electricity is more important than I thought it was?”

“Electromagnetic energy. And, no, not that.”

“Then I don’t have a clue what this could mean. Or even what this is.”

“Hollis and I have a theory.”

“Which is?”

“The theory is, my abilities are still with me, it’s just that now there’s something standing between me and the great wide world out there.”

“You’re not saying-”

“We think it might be you.”

“You are saying.” He frowned at her. “Isabel, how could it be me? I’m not psychic. I wouldn’t even know how to be psychic.”

“We think that might be the problem.”

Rafe waited, brows raised.

“When a latent first becomes a functional psychic, there’s an adjustment period. The psychic isn’t in control of his or her abilities from the get-go. I mean-look at Hollis. She’s been a medium for months and still can’t open and close that door at will. It takes concentration, and focus, and practice. A lot of practice.”

“I’m not psychic.” He said it with more wariness than uncertainty.

“Your grandmother was.”

“So?”

“So sometimes it runs in families. Your chances of being a latent psychic are much higher than average.”

“I still don’t-”

“Look. There was a connection between us from the beginning. Call it an attraction, a sense of understanding, simpatico, whatever. It was there. We both felt it.”

“I felt that, yes.”

“We feel it now,” she said, admitting it.

Rafe nodded immediately. “We feel it now.”

“And there’s the sparking thing. I told you that was something new for me.”

“Electromagnetic energy fields. Basic science.”

“Yeah, but the way those fields were reacting to each other and the strength of that reaction was something different. Something that might have affected my abilities.”