“Um… on another subject, I gather from your reaction that it isn’t normal for somebody touching Isabel to literally strike sparks?”
“I’ve never seen it happen before, though I’ve only known her a few months.” Hollis frowned. “I was given a pretty thorough knowledge of the other SCU members, and that definitely wasn’t mentioned. Could be something new for her, caused by this particular situation.”
“Or it could be Rafe.”
“Or it could be Rafe, yeah. Don’t quote me on this, because I’m certainly no expert, but I guess if the right two energy signatures came in contact, there could be something like those sparks.”
“Don’t tell me this is what all the poets wrote about,” Mallory begged.
Hollis smiled in response, but said, “Who knows? Maybe it’s as much an emotional connection as it is literal energy fields. In any case, those two are reacting to each other, and on a very basic level.”
“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
“I have no idea. But it might explain why Isabel seems to be having a rougher than usual time with this investigation.”
“What might explain it?” Rafe asked, entering in time to hear the statement.
“You.”
“Come again?”
“Hey, I’m just guessing,” Hollis told him. “And I’m a long way from being an expert on any of this stuff, as I just told Mallory. But I was taught at Quantico that sometimes electromagnetic fields-those of individual people or places-come together in a particular way that tends to change or enhance a psychic’s natural abilities. Or at least alter the limitations of those abilities. I have never seen Isabel so wide open, and as far as I can tell it’s all been hits. No misses. That is very unusual. I’m thinking that sparking thing between you two has something to do with it.”
“We can’t be sure everything she’s picked up is factual, not yet,” Rafe said without commenting on the sparking thing.
“I wouldn’t bet against her.”
“Well, I sure as hell hope she’s wrong about one thing. She thinks one of Jamie’s little games got out of hand. We’re now looking for evidence of a death here.”
“Shit.” Mallory stared at him. “You mean separate from our serial killer?”
“God knows. Hollis, are you getting anything?”
“I haven’t tried.” From the slightly stubborn set of her jaw, it didn’t appear she planned to anytime soon.
After seeing what had happened to Isabel, Rafe wasn’t about to push either psychic, but he was still curious. “Isabel never seems to try. I mean, it doesn’t seem to be an effort for her.”
“It isn’t. For her.”
He waited, brows raised.
After a moment, Hollis said, “You know the bit about me not being able to hear what these victims have tried to tell me? So far, I mean.”
Somewhat warily, Rafe said, “Yeah, I think I get that.”
“There’s a barrier, something virtually every psychic has. We call them shields. Think of it as a bubble of energy our minds create to protect us. Most psychics have to consciously make an opening in that shield in order to use our abilities. We have to reach out, open up, deliberately make ourselves vulnerable.”
“You didn’t seem to be doing it deliberately,” Rafe noted.
“I’m new at this. My control isn’t as strong as it should be yet, so sometimes I reach out-or at least open a door or window in my shields-without meaning or wanting to. Usually when I’m tired or distracted, something like that. Eventually, they tell me, I should be able to shut this stuff out unless and until I very specifically want it. Most psychics can do that. Isabel is the very rare one who can’t.”
“You mean-”
“I mean she lacks the ability to shield her own mind. She’s always wide open, always picking up information. Important stuff. Trivia. Everything in between. All that stuff always coming at her, crowding into her mind, like the voices of hundreds of people all talking at once. It’s a miracle she can make sense of it at all. Hell, it’s a miracle she isn’t locked up in a padded room somewhere, screaming her guts out.”
Hollis drew a breath. “When she told you she couldn’t stop it, she meant it literally. She can’t shut it off, ever.”
Isabel sat in the cool Jeep and stared down at her hands. Watching them shake.
“Okay,” she murmured, “so this one was bad. You’ve had bad ones before. You’ve heard all the ugly voices before. You can handle them. You can handle this.”
She heard the ghost of a laugh escape her. “But not if you keep talking to yourself.”
She laced her fingers together in her lap and raised her head, staring through the windshield at the building where Rafe and the others were.
It was where she should be, dammit, and never mind the pain. In there trying to sort through all the impressions, listening to the voices still echoing too loudly in her head. Even the ugly ones. Maybe especially the ugly ones.
Doing her job.
Isabel drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to focus, to soothe raw nerves and regain control of her senses, all her senses. Control. She had to find control.
Jamie had liked controlling people.
And that preacher…
God, my God, why have you abandoned me?
Obey your mistress! Crawl!
Just three quarts more, and-
Bones bend before they break, you know. Bones bend-
Blood… so much blood…
Her shaking hands lifted to cover her face, fingertips massaging her forehead and temples hard, and Isabel drew another breath, fighting to close out the voices. Not that she could.
Not that she’d ever been able to. Still, she tried.
Concentrate.
Focus.
Don’t listen to them.
She tempted me, that’s what it was. Tempted me down the road to damnation. I was weak. I was…
I can make the rope tighter. I can make the rope much tighter. You want me to, don’t you? You want me to hurt you. You want me to hurt you until you scream with the pain.
Bones bend…
And Bobby Grange, over to Horton Mill, he wants enough to fill a keg. Must be having a party, I guess. Guys like him keep me in business, that’s for sure. And it ain’t my business, what else they do. It just ain’t any of my affair.
It wasn’t my fault! She tempted me!
Do you know what happens when you feel all the pain you can feel? When your nerve endings are hot and raw, and your voice is gone from screaming? Do you know what it feels like to go beyond pain? Let’s find out…
Bones bend before they-
Isabel.
Iss… a… belll…
Her hands jerked away from her face, and Isabel stared all around her, a bit wildly at first. There it was. A different voice. Male. Powerful. Crouching in the darkness…
But… there was no one. No one. Her head was pounding, her heart pounding, and the voices were only whispers now. Only whispers, none of them calling her name.
“Okay,” she said aloud, shakily, “that was new. That was different.”
That was terrifying.
8
11:00 AM
T.J. MCCURRY FINISHED SPRAYING an area of the floor about two feet from the bed platform and said, “Kill the lights.”
They had already draped the high window, so when T.J.’s partner, Dustin Wall, turned off the lights in the room, they could all see the eerie greenish-white glow.
“Bingo,” Dustin muttered, and began photographing the evidence.
T.J. said, “Lotta blood here, Chief. There are some older spatters in other areas of the room, especially there around the bed, but here’s the only place where somebody bled like a stuck pig.”
“Bled enough to die?”