“A stressor,” Samantha said. “A final straw, something that set him off.”
“Some people just . . . have the worst luck,” Jonah said slowly. “The worst. He fell one day about four months ago. Just lost his balance and fell. So his caretaker called the doctor, over his objections. Within days he was back in Nashville for more tests.”
When he fell silent, Sarah said, “We probably wouldn’t have known until the end, if Bast had his way, but the doctors here had to know. And his caretaker. It was an inoperable tumor in his brain. They gave him six months. He didn’t want anyone feeling sorry for him. And people did tend to avoid him if they could. Because there were changes right away. Small, at first. Losing his temper. Muttering to himself as he walked. We all tried to talk to him, but he’d just walk away. Into the dark.”
Jonah drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I saved his life. So he could spend years in a hell of agony, and then die with cancer eating at his brain.”
“You couldn’t have known,” Sarah said.
“I don’t think that’s much of an excuse,” Jonah said.
Samantha leaned forward, elbows on the table. “Jonah. Whatever happened to him, whatever he went through because you pulled him from a burning car, he went through because you weren’t prepared to let him die without trying to save him. There’s nothing wrong in that. It’s one of the best instincts any human being can possess.”
“Tell that to the six people he punished for it.”
“He didn’t punish them for that,” Sam said.
Jonah frowned at her.
“You saved those six people, and their lives were just fine. They were alive because of you. He was alive because of you. But then he got cancer.” She shook her head. “A doctor would know better, but I’m guessing where the cancer is, its location in his brain, is the reason why it’s affected him the way it has. He needed someone to blame. He wanted someone to suffer. And while he was dealing with all that, he discovered that the tumor in his brain had given him something. Something special. A . . . final gift from a mocking fate.”
“He was psychic,” Jonah said.
—
BAST HAD THOUGHT it would be enough to watch Jonah suffer. He knew Jonah had suffered, was probably still suffering, but . . . that wasn’t really what he was thinking about now.
Things kept getting mixed up in his mind. He wasn’t even sure why he’d tried to make the telepath kill her partner. Except, maybe . . . he was jealous? No. Beauty and the Beast, that was just a fairy tale. But whenever he touched her mind, he felt . . . so much power. Power he didn’t think even she was aware of.
He thought . . .
He wondered . . . if maybe she could heal him. If all that power she had could burn away this cancer growing in his brain. Before his skull burst open like an overripe melon.
It felt like that sometimes.
The pressure. The pain. The almost overwhelming urge to find a knife or a chisel and dig it all out of his brain.
Maybe she could do that.
Maybe . . . she was the answer to his prayers.
—
LUCAS SAID, “BRAIN tumors have been known to trigger psychic abilities. But it isn’t a . . . normal trigger, for want of a better word. Instead of concentrating the ability, a tumor can disperse or diffuse it. It’s unreliable, even more so than usual with a new psychic. It can be erratic, like a lightbulb getting brighter just before it burns out.”
“He was able to control six people,” Jonah said.
“Control is probably too strong a word. It was more like he . . . sent a jolt of power into each of their minds. The initial jolts allowed him to control them, just for a few minutes. Just long enough. Once he had them down in that cavern, I think he gave them another jolt—and drugs in those IVs. Not just nutrients.
“The doctors will know more once they’ve run tox screens, but I’m betting that’s how he kept them still without having to tie them. There are drugs that do that. Keep the body completely immobile, but the mind alive, aware. And . . . slowly going crazy.”
“What about Nessa?”
“I had a look at her chart. Her pediatrician noted that she had an unusually high metabolism. Probably never cause her a health problem in her life, and she’ll stay enviably slim no matter what she eats. But she’ll also react unpredictably to most medications. Her doctor advised caution and observation whenever she was given anything she’d never taken before. My bet is that her body reacted differently to the drug he used. She realized she could move, just as she told you. And when she thought the time was right, that he wasn’t down there with them anymore, she felt her way out.”
There was a long silence, and then Dante said, “We’ll have to bring him in. Arrest him. He killed Annie Duncan. Held the others prisoner and most likely destroyed at least a few of those lives.”
“Yeah,” Jonah said.
“I doubt he’ll serve any time,” Lucas said. “If he’s as sick as I think he is, he’ll probably be sent to a critical care hospital. And die there even before charges could be brought against him.”
“Or maybe not.”
They all nearly jumped out of their skins at the new voice, and yet froze at the same time. Because somehow, he had slipped behind one of the evidence boards—and now he was behind Dante, hauling him up from his chair.
He had a gun pointed at Dante’s carotid.
And Bast Gettys was indeed a monster. His face was hideously deformed, one ear gone and the other hardly a twisted lump. His discolored head was bald with ropes of scar tissue, and the lack of eyebrows made him look vaguely surprised. More ropey scarring twisted around his face and neck, and disappeared beneath his shirt. The arm he held across Dante’s neck and upper chest was the one with fingers fused. His other hand seemed perfectly comfortable holding the gun at Dante’s neck.
“Bast, I’m the one you want.” Jonah had managed to turn his chair just a bit, but he didn’t want to rise until he had to, since it was impossible to hide the big silver gun he still wore.
“Well, I thought you were,” Bast said in a reasonable tone, his head so close to Dante’s it would have been difficult to slide a piece of paper between them. “I planned it all out. And it worked. I got the ones I wanted, the other ones you saved. I put them in a dark hole they’ll never get out of, even if you carried their bodies out.”
“Then you have your revenge, Bast.”
“Revenge? It was never about revenge, Jonah. It was about fairness. You saved them, and they were all fine. They were living good lives. You saved me, and I was—I am—a monster. But even that wasn’t unfair enough. I had to be something worse. So then I got cancer. I got this horrible black thing eating at my brain. Does that sound fair to you, Jonah?”
Dante spoke suddenly. “It sounds like life to me. Fair, unfair, we all get our share sooner or later. In this life or the next.”
“Dante,” Robbie said in a warning tone.
“What do you think, Bast?” Dante asked. “Do you think killing my friends will even the score? Do you think that’ll make your cancer and your scars disappear?”
“I think she can. The telepath. I think she can make the cancer go away. I can see into her mind a little, and I think she can—”
The only thing they could all agree on afterward was that everything happened at once. There was a boom of thunder so loud it shook the building. The lights flickered. They could all see Dante reaching for Bast’s gun, all of them knowing he would never make it before that tightening finger pulled the trigger.
All of them were rising from the table, most reaching for their guns. But Robbie held out one hand, stretching it toward the monster who was going to kill Dante.
There was another crash of thunder, this one accompanied by a bright flash of lightning.
That was what everyone said. That Jonah’s big silver gun bucked in his hand just a second, a split second, after Bast blew a horribly big hole in Dante’s neck. That Dante was falling boneless to the floor, his wide eyes already sightless, as Robbie stretched out her hand even farther and cried out an anguished, “No!”