Kay Hooper - Blood Dreams

"Because I was the logical team member to send. I haven't been a full-fledged agent for all that long, so I'm well under the Director's radar. I wasn't on another case. I haven't been with the task force. As a matter of fact, I'm still officially on leave, after the last case I was on ended… painfully."

Dani asked a silent question with lifted brows.

"I got shot."

"You-"

Hollis waved away concern. "I'm fine. I heal fast. Which is a good thing, apparently, because I hold the distinction of being the member of the SCU wounded the most times in the line of duty. Technically, the only member ahead of me on the list is Bishop, because he died. Death trumps multi-wounded."

Dani blinked. "You're not serious."

"No, being dead really does top being multi-wounded. Quentin decided. You draw even with dead only when you've been wounded a dozen times or else spend at least a month in a coma."

Dani hadn't met Quentin, though since he was one of the more infamous members of the SCU she had certainly heard things about him. She really wanted to meet him. "That's not what I meant. Bishop died?"

"Well, just for a little while. A few minutes. I'll have to tell you that story sometime too. It's a doozy."

"I'll bet."

Paris came into the conference room and closed the door behind her. "Marc's on his way" she reported. "The preliminary forensics from the crime scene are just coming in, so he's bringing them."

"Oh, joy" Hollis said. "I just love starting out my day with crime-scene photos and forensics reports on a grisly murder." She half-stood to reach into an open box of donuts placed incongruously beside the photos. "And a jelly donut. I can handle most anything as long as I start my day with a jelly donut. Or cold pizza."

Dani hadn't spent much time with Hollis-in the flesh, so to speak-but she had quickly realized that the other woman's seemingly flippant attitude was a combination of genuine humor and the darker gallows type common among cops and soldiers.

One could summon a grim laugh, or one could drown in the horror of an unspeakable crime. Hollis would always summon a laugh.

So would Paris.

"Are there any left with sprinkles?" Paris asked, going to the coffee station set up on one side of the conference room. "I need caffeine and sprinkles to get going. And Dani got me up and out of the house too early for either."

"Two left with sprinkles. Dani?"

Feeling her stomach twist, Dani shook her head. "I'm good, thanks."

"No, you aren't," Paris said as she joined them at the table. "Your nerves on an empty stomach are never a good thing." She produced, as if from thin air, a tall lidded paper cup and a straw. "One of Marc's obliging deputies got this for you. A vanilla milk shake."

"I hope you thanked him for me."

"I did. Drink up."

"Interesting breakfast," Hollis commented, preparing to bite into her donut.

"Her vision dreams come with a touchy stomach," Paris explained.

Dani said, "Miranda told us most of the psychics they've found over the years tend to pay some price, physically, for the abilities they have."

Hollis nodded. "True enough. Lots have headaches, some blackouts, even short-term memory loss. A few use up energy so fast it's like their abilities are more powerful than their own bodies. Scary stuff."

"Do you pay a price?" Dani asked.

"Headaches, though usually not bad ones. And when there's a storm, I feel like one giant exposed nerve. All that electrical energy, according to Bishop."

"Not fun."

"No."

Dani shrugged. "I get off pretty easy."

Paris said, "With the vision dreams, maybe. But it sure as hell drains you when you do the dream-walk thing."

Hollis looked interested. "You can dream-project? That's rare."

"What I do isn't really dream-projecting. I mean, I can't enter other people's dreams," Dani explained. "Just pull them into mine. Sometimes. But I'm not very strong at it."

"Want to qualify that a little more?" Paris asked dryly.

"Well, it's true and you know it. I can't pull just anybody in: there has to be a connection of some kind. Besides, I'm out of practice."

"Just because you spent ten years trying to deny-"

" Paris."

Her sister lifted her hands in a helpless gesture directed at Hollis. "She doesn't like to talk about it. But the truth is that until we teamed back up to work with Haven, Dani went out of her way to avoid… connecting… with anybody. So she is out of practice, and that ability is a rusty one; we've only been able to use it a couple of times in the last year or so."

Dani concentrated on drinking her milk shake, hoping to quiet the uneasy rumblings of her stomach.

"But the abilities still affect you physically," Hollis noted, watching her.

Dani shrugged. "It's a nuisance, mostly. But it's a temporary nuisance, not a regular occurrence."

"So you usually don't have the same vision dream more than once?"

"Oh, I've had them more than once. And the third time, as they say, is the charm."

"Then it comes true?"

"Then it comes true. But I've never before had the same one nearly every night for weeks on end." Dani lifted her milk shake in a slightly mocking toast. "Which also explains why I take very, very seriously the feeling of doom this particular vision dream creates in me."

"Marc, you'd better take a look at this."

"I've just about hit my quota of sickening this morning, Jordan," the sheriff said as he rose from the chair behind his desk. "Forensics reports. Teresa was right, dammit; we have pieces of two vics, not one. We won't get a DNA match for a while, but… Shit. Just tell me you don't have more of the same to show me."

"What I've got to show you is just plain weird," his deputy told him flatly.

"Christ. What is it?"

"Shorty said he made the comment to you that maybe this killer was drawing us a picture or something out there. With the blood and-everything else at the scene."

"Yeah, I remember."

"Well, he got to thinking, apparently. Even before he talked to you about it. Wondered if maybe there was a pattern in that mess none of us could see-at ground level."

After a moment, Marc said, "I'm all for initiative. So where did he take the shot?"

"The roof. There was a ladder in the garage, he said. I didn't ask too many questions."

"Because he got something?"

Jordan took another step into the office and held out a photograph. "It wasn't obvious until he did some digital work this morning, removing all of us, the equipment, everything that altered the scene from how the killer actually left it. But it's obvious as hell now."

Marc studied the photo for only a moment, then swore under his breath and picked up the closed folder on his blotter. "Come on. Time for you to meet the rest of the team."

"There's a team?" Jordan followed the sheriff from his office and down the hallway toward the conference room, adding in a lowered tone, "I'm not going to like this, am I?"

"You'll like the team. You won't like what they have to say."

"I saw Paris out here a little while ago."

"Yeah."

"Dani too?"

Marc nodded.

"Since when do we work with civilians?"

"Since now." Marc paused at the door of the conference room and gave his chief deputy a steady look. "Remember all those stories your grandmother used to tell you?"

The sick feeling that had been twisting in Jordan 's gut since he'd first seen Shorty's overhead shot of the crime scene intensified. "Yeah, I remember. Are you telling me-"

"I'm telling you to keep an open mind." Marc opened the conference room door, adding, "And brace yourself."

"That's a good forensics guy you've got there," Hollis said absently about ten minutes later as she studied the photo pinned to the bulletin board on one side of the conference room. "He thought outside the box."