“I’d call that creepy,” Mallory said.
“Yeah, it’s not much fun.” Isabel shrugged. “Anyway, what really brought me to Hastings is that I had a vision while Tricia Kane was being killed. I felt what she felt. And when he drove that knife into her chest for the last time before she died, her hands reached up to touch the knife-and touched his hands. He was wearing gloves. Not latex gloves, but thick leather gloves, like working gloves. His hands were big, or at least that was the sense I got.”
“And you’re just now telling us this?”
“I’m just now remembering.” Isabel frowned. “I guess the voices crowded it out. Maybe that’s one in the plus column for your shield.”
Thunder rumbled just then, and they all glanced upward at the threatening sky.
Half under her breath, Hollis muttered, “Oh, God, I hate storms.”
“We’re about to have our crime scene washed away,” Rafe noted. “Weather’s calling for heavy rain today and tonight, with and without thunderstorms.”
Isabel hesitated, looking at him. “I’ve tried,” she said. “I’ve tried all morning to pick up something, and I can’t. I can’t break through the shield.”
“Stop trying to break through it.” He held out a hand to her. “Work with me, not against me.”
“Rafe-”
“We don’t have the luxury of time, not that we ever did. We can’t afford to wait any longer. Like it or not, this is it.”
“Should we leave?” Hollis asked, indicating herself and Mallory.
“No,” Isabel said, then hesitated, recalling what had happened with Paige, and added, “But you might want to step back a little bit.”
Both women did, watching the other two warily.
Slowly, Isabel reached out her own hand and felt the spark, felt his fingers closing around hers.
“I wish we had more time,” Rafe told her. “I wish we had the luxury of dinners and movies, and hours of talking to each other about what matters to us. But the truth is, we don’t have that time. We need every possible tool we can get our hands on-or our minds wrapped around-and we need it now.”
“Yes. I know.”
“You’re next on his list. You know that too.”
Isabel hesitated again, then nodded.
“Paige said we’d have to work together. That it would take both of us to figure out how to use this shield.”
“Yes.” Isabel looked at their hands for a moment, suddenly realizing something. “You’re right-handed; I’m left-handed.” Those were the hands clasping.
“Like closing a circuit,” Rafe said slowly. “Or maybe… opening one. All this started when I held your wrists. Both of them.”
“Alan, why on earth would I trust you?” Dana Earley demanded.
“Because you want a good story, you want to find out what happened to Cheryl Bayne, and you don’t want to be the next blonde on the menu.” He paused. “Probably in that order.”
Dana didn’t bother to be indignant. “So you found out that I have police sources in Alabama you want me to tap, and in exchange you’ll share information you got from your own sources in Florida.”
“Yes. Look, you’re TV and I’m newspaper; if we work this right we can both be heroes.”
“Or one of us could be dead. Like me. Alan, if Cheryl is dead it has to be because she got too close. I’m not so sure I want to get too close to this guy, story or no story.”
“Which,” Alan said, “is why we have to move fast.”
“Jesus. I know I’m going to regret this.”
Isabel turned slightly so that they were facing each other, glanced down at the bloody ground where the horribly mutilated body of a young woman she had both liked and felt sorry for had so recently lain, and her mouth firmed. “We should be somewhere else,” she said.
“No.”
She looked at Rafe.
“We should be here. We need to be here, Isabel.”
“Why?”
“Because two women died here. Because evil did what it wanted to do, needed to do, here.”
The sound of thunder grew louder, more ominous.
“It’s disrespectful. Let the rain wash away her blood.”
“That isn’t the investigator talking,” he said.
Isabel smiled wryly. “No. It isn’t. I liked her, you know. She felt isolated and misunderstood-and I could relate. I’m sorry she’s dead.”
“I know. So am I. But the only thing we can do for her now is stop her killer before he does that to someone else.”
Before he does it to you.
Isabel could almost hear his words in her head. Or maybe she did hear them. Whichever it was, she knew he was right. “Yes,” she said.
“The universe put us here. And it put us here, and now, for a reason. Remember what you told me? We leave footprints when we pass. Skin cells, stray hairs. And energy. He left his energy here, and recently. He left his hate, and his anger, and the stamp of his evil.”
There was a flash in the distance, and Isabel said, almost to herself and with a touch of fear in her voice, “I can smell it. But it’s lightning, not brimstone.”
His fingers tightened around hers. “Is it? You said you had to face it this time. Confront it this time. That ugly face evil always hides behind something else. You have to face it. But, Isabel, you won’t do it alone. Not this time. Not ever again.”
She drew a breath and let it out slowly. “I didn’t expect that. I’m not quite sure how to deal with that.”
“The same way you deal with everything else,” he said, smiling faintly. “Head-on.”
“Before the storm gets here.”
He nodded. “Before the storm. Before the rain washes away the blood, and the lightning changes the energy here. The energy in this place-his and ours, even anything left of hers-is what we need to help us take the next step. There’s nothing disrespectful about that. It’s doing our job. It’s fighting evil the only way we can.”
“How do you know so much?”
“I’ve been paying attention.”
Isabel hesitated only another instant, then held out her right hand. “Okay. Let’s see where the next step takes us.”
He put his left hand into her right one.
Hollis said, at the time and long afterward, that there should have been something, some outward sign, to indicate what turned out to be a most astonishing event. But, outwardly at least, there was nothing. Just two people facing each other, holding hands, their faces calm but eyes curiously intent.
Mallory took a step closer to Hollis, murmuring, “I get the feeling I’ve missed something important.”
“Beats the hell out of me,” Hollis told her. “I mean, I know it has to do with this shield of Rafe’s, but I have no idea what they’re trying to do about it.”
“Get rid of it, maybe?”
“No, from what Isabel told me, that would probably not be such a good idea.”
“Why not? I mean, if it’s blocking her voices?”
“I don’t know. She said something about their combined energy being too strong, especially now when it’s new and not under their control. That bad things could happen if they just… let go of it.”
Mallory sighed. “I long for the days when all we had to deal with was trace evidence, footprints, the occasional half-blind or very stoned eyewitness…”
“Yeah, I imagine that was easier. Or simpler, at least.”
“I’ll say.”
After several minutes of silence except for the growing intensity of the thunder rumbling overhead, Hollis ventured a step closer to Isabel and Rafe. “Well?”
“Well, what?” Isabel asked in perfect calm without turning her head.