“Men and women,” Hollis said. “She really did want to be boss, didn’t she? I wonder what would happen if she ran into somebody who wanted to be boss even more than she did?”
“A trigger, maybe,” Isabel said in an absentminded tone.
“His trigger?” Rafe asked. “He wanted to be the one on top-so to speak-and it wasn’t a position Jamie was willing to allow him to assume?”
“Maybe.” Isabel’s tone was still abstracted. “Especially if we find out the other two primary victims from the earlier murders were unusually strong women. Dominant women. That could be his trigger, his hot button. Finding himself interested in women literally too strong for him.”
“Some men just prefer their women to be sweet and submissive, I guess,” Hollis said dryly.
“Jerks,” Mallory said, then lifted a brow at Rafe. “Forensics?”
“Yeah, get them out here,” Rafe said. “But only T.J. and Dustin with their kits, not the van. I’d still like to keep this quiet as long as we’ve got a hope in hell of it.”
“Right.” She pulled out her cell phone.
Rafe walked over to Isabel, still uneasily sensing that something wasn’t right with her. She was no longer touching the mattress but was gazing off into space with that distant expression he was beginning to recognize in her eyes. But this time she seemed to be looking so far away that it sent a chill through him.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“There is,” she said slowly, “a lot of pain in this room.”
“You don’t feel it, do you?”
“No. No, I’m not an empath. I feel during the visions, but not this. I just… I just know there’s a lot of pain in this room. Physical. Emotional. Psychological.” She reached both hands up and rubbed the nape of her neck. Her hair was in its accustomed neat, high ponytail, and Rafe could see how hard she was kneading the tense muscles of her neck. But before he could ask about that, she went on in the same level tone.
“Jamie was strong. Very strong. But she’d spent her life being the good girl. Pretending to be what everybody wanted her to be. Hiding inside that shell. But this part of her life… this is where she could be in control. Really in control. Where she could be herself and be respected-demand respect-for who she really was.”
Hollis stepped closer, her frown deepening. “Isabel-”
“This is where she called the shots. Her partners, male or female, were never her lovers, never close to her emotionally; they were… validation. That she was strong and certain. That she was the one in control. They did anything she told them to do. Everything. No matter what, no matter how wild she got. No matter how much she hurt them.”
When Rafe realized that Isabel’s nails were literally digging into her own skin despite the gloves she wore, he stripped his own gloves off and reached up and grasped her wrists, ignoring the again visible and audible flash that was a hell of a lot stronger than any static shock he’d ever felt. He pulled her hands away from her neck.
“Wow,” Hollis murmured. “Talk about sparks.”
Rafe ignored her. “Isabel.”
She blinked, those vivid green eyes still distant but seemingly focusing on him. “What?”
“You’ve got to stop. Now.”
“I can’t.”
“You have to. This is hurting you.” He wasn’t entirely sure she knew who he was. She was looking at him, he thought, as though he were the only Technicolor object in a black-and-white universe. Puzzled and wondering.
“It always hurts,” she said matter-of-factly. “What difference does that make?”
“Isabel-”
“Bad things happened here, you know. It’s been going on for years. Years. But Jamie was always in control. She had to be. Always. At least until…”
She frowned. “They sold insurance here, and before that-no, after that-somebody sold bootleg whiskey out of here for nearly a year. Moonshine, just like you said. How strange. And a preacher spent some time here, a few weeks. Except that he wasn’t a preacher anymore, because he’d been caught in bed with a deacon’s wife and it hadn’t been the first time. He thought God had abandoned him, but it was the other way around…”
Hollis said, “Take her outside. There are too many secrets in this place. Too much pain. Too much information for her to sort through all at once.”
Rafe didn’t wait for a more complete explanation; Isabel was pale, he could feel her shaking, and it didn’t require anything more than common sense to know she was very close to some kind of collapse. So he took her outside.
Isabel didn’t really protest, although once they were outside she did mutter under her breath, “Shit. I hate it when this happens.”
He put her in the passenger seat of his Jeep and got the engine and air conditioner running, then dug into his first-aid kit and pulled out a gauze pad.
“What’s that for?”
He tore open the wrapping and reached over to place the pad against the nape of her neck, again ignoring a strong shock.
“Ouch,” she said.
“You drew blood,” Rafe told her. “Even with the gloves on. Jesus, does this happen often?”
Isabel looked down at her hands with a faint frown, then stripped off the gloves. “Oh… from time to time. Bishop keeps telling me I should wear my nails short. Maybe I’d better start listening to him. Got any aspirin in that box?”
“Ibuprofen.”
“Even better. If I could have a couple? Or… a dozen?” She reached up to hold the pad in place herself while he got the pain reliever and then a bottle of water from the cooler he kept in the Jeep.
By the time she had swallowed four capsules, the faint scratches had stopped bleeding, and Rafe used an antiseptic pad to wipe the nape of her neck while she sat with her head bowed and eyes closed.
Every time he touched her, the shock was definite, but she didn’t react or comment and Rafe thought he was getting used to it. In fact, it seemed to clear his head.
Which was more than a little unnerving.
Her pale gold hair felt even silkier than it looked and seemed to want to cling to the back of his hand as he worked on her neck. Static, of course. Had to be. He concentrated on treating the scratches she had inflicted on herself, though he admitted silently that it took him longer than was strictly necessary.
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it. Are you going to be okay?”
She nodded slightly, still without opening her eyes. “When the painkillers kick in. And as long as I don’t go back in there right away.”
“Isabel-”
“Look, I know you have questions. Can we save them for a while, please?” She raised her head and opened her eyes finally, looking at him. The distant expression was gone, but she looked incredibly tired. “For now, your forensics team should be here any minute; why don’t you go back inside and get everybody doing their thing? Hollis may be able to help. I felt something weird in there.”
Rafe thought there had been a lot of weird in there, but all he said was, “Meaning?”
“That increasing nervousness and fear Emily had been seeing in her sister. I don’t think it was just because Jamie was afraid her secret life would be exposed. I think she had another secret, a far worse one. And a much greater fear. I think something went wrong in there. I think she went too far.”
“What are you saying?” He asked the question, even though he knew what she would answer.
“Have your team look for signs of blood. A lot of blood.”
“No sign of that box,” Mallory said after both women had thoroughly searched the back room. “No sign of anything she wanted to keep hidden-outside that closet, I mean.”
Hollis nodded. “There’s an attic, but it’s wide open and empty.”