“I saw this bright light, Dillon. It nearly blinded me, and I swear to you, for some reason I just couldn’t move. The light was right in front of that big window, and I know I saw Timmy and Marilyn in the middle of that light.
“I could hear the other agents yelling at each other. I realized they weren’t seeing what I was. Still I couldn’t move. I was just nailed to the spot looking at that white light. Then Timmy Tuttle grabbed Marilyn tight around her neck, and…”
“And what?”
“Dillon, I’m not crazy, I swear.”
He pulled her against him. “I know.”
“They just disappeared. It was like they were right in front of me, then they were in front of the window, and the window was bathed in the white light. Then they receded through that white light until they were gone. Then everything just seemed to close down. That’s all I remember.”
Savich said, “That’s just fine, Sherlock. Well done. It fits right into the rest of it. It seems logical to everyone that Tammy Tuttle used some sort of mass hypnosis. You know how David Copperfield walked through the Great Wall of China? How he got sawed in half with millions of people watching, most of them on TV?”
“Yes. You think Tammy has this skill?”
“It makes sense. There she or he was with Marilyn, and then she or he just wasn’t there. I think the whole thing was this big performance that she worked out to show us that we are dealing with a master. You know what else I think? I think Tammy knew I was trying to trap her and using Marilyn as bait. She knew we’d be at the airport waiting for her. She was ready for us. I also think she really wants us to believe that everything we saw was supernatural, beyond our meager brains. But it’s not. She’s just very, very good. She wanted to scare us all to death, paralyze us. I do wonder, though, why she didn’t try to kill me.”
Sherlock pulled away, stroked her fingers over his jaw, and said, “I think it’s because she couldn’t get close enough to you. I’ve given this a lot of thought, Dillon, and I think you’re one of the few people Tammy’s ever met whom she can’t hypnotize or perform an illusion for when she’s up close to you. And if she can’t get close to you without your seeing exactly what she is, then she can’t kill you.”
“You mean if I had been close to her, I wouldn’t have seen Timmy, I’d have really seen Tammy?”
“Yes, it sounds reasonable. If she can’t get close enough to you without your seeing her exactly as she is, then she knows she’s at a disadvantage. When you were in the barn in Maryland with her, how far away were you standing from her?”
“Maybe two dozen feet.”
“And she was always just what she was? Tammy Tuttle?”
“Yes. She called the Ghouls, but she didn’t change. When I shot her, I saw the bullet nearly rip her arm from her body. I saw her fall, heard her yells of pain. She remained exactly what she was and who she was.”
Sherlock said, “Then at the airport, she just couldn’t get close enough to you to kill you. And she realized, too, that she couldn’t get too close or you’d see her as she really is and kill her. She’s being really careful after what you did to her at the barn.”
Savich said, “Jimmy Maitland called me at the gym, told me that Jane Bitt in Behavioral Sciences allowed that just maybe it is possible that Tammy is a strong telepath in addition to all her illusion skills. She won’t swear to it, says she doesn’t want to get mocked out, but we should consider it, given the incredible control Tammy was able to exert at the airport.”
Sherlock said, “So maybe she’s got both this talent and skill in creating illusions. I think you were right. Tammy knew that you were setting her up. She also knew that you would bring Marilyn. For whatever reason, she wanted Marilyn back. I’m just hoping that she didn’t want her back to kill her. Maybe she really is fond of Marilyn. Maybe Marilyn feeds her ego, makes her feel powerful because she’s so very malleable and suggestible. Tammy can make Marilyn see, make her believe anything she tells her to believe. Didn’t you tell me that Marilyn firmly believes everything Tammy says?”
“Oh, yes, and it’s genuine, Sherlock. Even under hypnosis, Marilyn was frightened of Tammy and she believed everything she said to Dr. Hicks and to me. She remembered it as fact, for heaven’s sake, so she had to have believed it.”
Savich threw back the covers and jumped to his feet. He grabbed a pair of jeans as an afterthought and pulled them on. “I’m going to do some research on this with MAX.”
He walked back to the bed, grinned down at his wife, pulled her up tightly against him, and kissed her until she would have just as soon he waited until morning to visit MAX. But she knew that brain of his was working again, asking questions, wanting to know everything, and fast.
“I won’t be gone too long.”
She lay back down in bed, shut off the table lamp, pulled the covers to her chin, and smiled into the darkness when she heard Dillon speaking to MAX down the hall in his study. She heard him laugh.
22
Hemlock Bay, California
There weren’t any caves, not even one indentation in the rock where she could squeeze in and wait them out. Just a beach that went on and on, driftwood piled all over it, and slimy trails of kelp, dangerous when you were running.
But she had a gun. It was small and ugly, but she wasn’t defenseless. From what she knew about guns, which wasn’t much, it was a close-range gun, useless at a distance, but if you got near enough, it could kill a person quite easily.
The temperature dropped as the sun went behind gathering clouds, whirling rain clouds. Any minute now rain would pour down. Would that help her or not? She didn’t know.
Had there been three men? One staying with Simon and the other two after her? Maybe there were just two men and Simon could get away and call for help. They’d been idiots-telling their FBI protectors that since they were just going to the cemetery and they wanted to be private, they’d meet them back in Hemlock Bay.
She stopped, bending over, her hands on her thighs, so tired her breath was catching and she was wheezing with the effort to breathe. She flattened herself in the shadow of the cliff and looked back.
Then, suddenly, she heard one of the men cup his hands around his mouth and shout, “Lily Frasier! We have Simon Russo. Come out now or we will kill him. That is a promise. Then we will call our friends to come at you from the other end of the beach. We will trap you, and you won’t like what will happen to you then.”
The man’s words brought her breath back, straightened her right up. The man’s voice was also thick with an accent-stilted, unnatural. Swedish. Well, damn, it seemed that Olaf Jorgenson himself had come, or sent his friends. She ran again, until she rounded a slight promontory and looked up. She had found her way out. Another narrow trail snaked up the cliff, much like the one she’d taken down. Two miles back up the beach? Three miles? She didn’t make a sound, just shot up that trail, using her hands on rocks and scrubs, anything to keep her steady, knowing they couldn’t see her until they came around the promontory themselves.
They couldn’t kill Simon. They’d left him alone in the car. If there was a third man watching him, well then, they couldn’t contact him. Unless they had a cell phone. Everybody had a cell phone. Oh, God, please, no. It had to be a bluff, it just had to be.
She slipped once, saw pebbles and small rocks gushing out from the cliff and pounding their way back down to the beach. She held still, then started up again. She was up to the top of the cliff in no time and running. The men would realize soon enough where she’d gone.