"No need to on my account."
Leo shook his head. "On everybody's account. You haven't been around much, so you haven't realized that everybody is on edge and anxious. There's just too much going on around here. I've even been asked by a few to pull up stakes in Golden and move on."
Samantha didn't look at Lucas. "We're only supposed to stay here until next Monday."
"Yeah. And we will-unless you change your mind about that."
"We'll see," she said.
"Just let me know." Leo sighed. "In the meantime, it'll do everybody good to have a night off. Matter of fact, I think most of them want to go into town, stay at the motel. I can't make out whether it's nerves or just the usual occasional need to sleep somewhere other than the caravans."
Lucas took Samantha's hand, rather surprising her, and said to Leo, "Keep an eye on your people. I don't think this killer would target any of you, but I can't be sure. So watch your backs."
"We will, Luke. Thanks."
As he led her back toward the parking area and his rental car, Samantha said quietly, "Leo's still grateful that you stood behind the carnival three years ago. When that garbage about gypsies stealing children hit the papers, a lot of ugly things started happening. If you hadn't convinced the local police to provide some security for us and gone on the record as saying no one in the carnival was involved, God knows where it would have ended."
"I was doing my job."
"You did more than your job, and we both know it."
Lucas silently unlocked the rental car and opened the passenger door for her.
She got in, once again conscious of weariness. And she wondered, as he came around the car and slid behind the wheel, if her plan was going to work. She wasn't sure, not anymore. Yes, Luke had been able to find the sheriff today, in time and against all odds, but she had the sense now that his walls were even higher and thicker than they had been before.
She had gotten too close and he had shut down. Maybe for good.
As they left the fairgrounds, he said, "I need to stop by my room and pick up a few things."
"You don't have to stay with me tonight."
"I'm not going to argue about this, Sam. I'm staying. For the duration."
"If I have to have a watchdog, I'm sure Jaylene wouldn't mind a roommate."
"Stop pushing, Sam."
"I'm not pushing, I'm trying to give you an out."
"I don't want an out."
"Right, you just want to punish me with the silent treatment."
"I'm not trying to-" He shook his head. "Christ, you make me crazy."
"It doesn't show. Very little shows, really, most of the time. On your face. There's intensity inside, force, but you keep it damped down almost always, out of sight. Is that the way you were raised, to show no emotion, no feeling? Is that part of it?"
Lucas didn't answer. In fact, he didn't say a word for the remainder of the trip to his motel and then back to hers. Samantha remained silent as well, and once they were inside the room she left him locking the door and went to take her usual shower.
She didn't linger, this time, under the hot water; it failed to either relax her or even begin to warm the chill deep inside her. She got out and dried off, put on her nightgown and robe. She toweled her hair, then used the wall hair dryer to completely dry it because she felt so cold.
When she came out of the bathroom and into the bedroom, she found Lucas on his feet but frowning at the television, and when she followed his gaze she could see why.
The exterior of the sheriff's department-and their arrival with Wyatt Metcalf.
The anchorwoman was briskly introducing the reporter on the scene, and then he was on-screen with the sheriff's department behind him. His voice held that urgent if muted excitement that was so common in television journalism, as he quickly brought viewers up to speed on the investigation and then detailed today's search and rescue of the sheriff of Clayton County.
"… and a source close to the investigation claims that deputies and federal agents were aided in their search for the sheriff by an avowed psychic. The woman's name is Samantha Burke, though she uses the name Madam Zarina when she tells fortunes in a carnival currently set up here in Golden. My source claims that she has apparently involved herself before in police investigations."
Amazing, Samantha thought, how "involved herself" could sound so suspicious.
"Tom, have the police or federal agents confirmed that Miss Burke helped them to locate Sheriff Metcalf?"
"No, Darcell, officials refused to comment. However, my source is certain that she played a major role in recovering the sheriff alive, and locals are talking of little else. Earlier today, Miss Burke herself made a brief statement on the steps of the sheriff's department, claiming that the person who abducted and murdered Detective Lindsay Graham last week had left an object in the detective's apartment, which Miss Burke says triggered a vision. She did not share details of the supposed vision, but stated that she was certain the same person had abducted Sheriff Metcalf. She appeared willing to say more, but one of the federal agents involved in the investigation cut the statement short and pulled her into the building."
Samantha sank down on the edge of the bed and murmured, "Shit."
The anchorwoman, with only the faintest note of disbelief in her voice, said, "Kidnapping, murder, and mysticism in Golden; we'll look forward to further reports, Tom."
Lucas used the remote to turn off the TV and then dropped it onto the bed. He walked over to the window and pulled the curtains slightly to one side, gazing out.
Samantha knew a delaying tactic when she saw one, and wondered if he was actually too angry to speak. Part of her wanted to say something that might defuse the situation, but she knew she couldn't do that. Not now.
Deliberately offhand, she said, "I just can't get the hang of talking to reporters, can I?"
"Is that all you have to say?" His voice was very quiet.
She wanted to tell him the truth, that she had gambled her little press conference would only make the local papers and that it had been designed as much to anger him as anything else, another of her tactics intended to push through his walls.
But she was just too tired to get into all that, so she merely said, "Well… I can say I didn't expect a TV reporter to quote me on the eleven o'clock news, naive as that sounds. There wasn't a TV camera there, so… I can even say I made a mistake talking to the press at all. But what difference would any of it make, Luke? I became part of the story, and they were not going to let me pass unnoticed."
"Just like before." His words dropped into the quiet room like icicles.
"So it's my fault, what happened before? It's my fault that a reporter lied and claimed I knew who had abducted that child, that I'd seen it in a vision, and the kidnapper panicked and killed her?"
"I never said that."
"You never had to. Oh, you blamed yourself for not finding her quickly enough, but we both know if I hadn't been involved, that reporter would never have made his claim, would never even have speculated there was anything paranormal in the investigation. And maybe, just maybe, that little girl would have lived long enough for you to find her alive."
Samantha had known that in pushing and prodding Luke she was likely to open her old wounds as well as his, but she hadn't expected the strength of the pain.
Lucas turned but remained at the window. His face was hard, expressionless. "It wasn't your fault," he said.
"Once more with feeling."
"What do you want from me, Sam? I never believed it was your fault. What I did believe, what I came to understand, was that Bishop was right about the issue of credibility. Because any unscrupulous reporter would find it a lot easier and a lot safer to fabricate something as coming from the mouth of a carnival mystic than from a federal agent."