“Oh, come on, Isabel. As soon as we talked earlier, I could see the wheels turning. You saw a potential emotional complication looming and, characteristically, your response was to charge toward it head-on. If he was going to be a problem in any way whatsoever, you intended to deal with it now. Whether he was ready or not.”
“Why is everybody else suddenly so perceptive as to my motives?” Isabel demanded. “I’m supposed to be the clairvoyant one. Look, I wasn’t after a one-night stand. Necessarily. It’s just… things are simpler when the physical stuff is out of the way, that’s all.”
Shaking her head, Hollis said, “Well, now I can understand why your past relationships weren’t entirely successful, if that’s your attitude about sex. Just something to get over and done with?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Yes, you did. You’re a lot of things, Isabel, but subtle isn’t one of them. You probably as good as told the man you wanted to sleep with him so you wouldn’t be distracted having to think about it anymore.”
“I was not that blunt.”
“Maybe not, but I’m sure he got the gist of it.”
Isabel sat down in the chair in the corner of the bedroom and scowled at Hollis. “The SCU therapist says I have a few emotional issues about giving up control.”
“No, really?”
“It’s not a big thing. I just… prefer to make the first move whenever possible.”
“Because the last guy you allowed to make the first move turned out to be a twisted, evil bastard. Yeah, I get that. I imagine Rafe gets it as well.”
“I don’t like having transparent motives,” Isabel announced. “It makes me feel naked.”
Hollis smiled. “Don’t snap at the messenger. I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know.”
Isabel sighed. “It’s about control. I know it’s about control. Even after all these years, I can’t help feeling… wary. Not of men in general, just of men who might-possibly-mean something to me. Especially if they’re obviously very strong men. Don’t you? We both went through similar experiences, after all, and yours was just a few months ago.”
“I had Maggie Barnes,” Hollis reminded her. “That empathy thing of hers did a dandy job of taking away a lot of the pain and healing the trauma. Even though what happened to me was just months ago, it feels more like years. Decades. Distant, unimportant, almost as if it happened to someone else. Almost. Do I know if I can feel a normal, healthy desire for a man? No idea. Not yet anyway. Haven’t met a man I felt that sort of interest in so far.”
Isabel lifted an eyebrow. “You seemed a bit drawn to Caleb Powell, I thought.”
“A bit,” Hollis admitted with a shrug. “But… a big-city-caliber attorney lives and works in a small town for a reason. He wants a simple life. Had one, too, until a lethal killer began stalking his nice little town, and his employee and friend was horribly murdered. Now, like it or not, I’m part of that gruesome series of events that’s turning his simple, peaceful existence upside down.”
“You’re one of the good guys.”
“Yeah, points in the positive column for that. But not enough to balance it, I’m afraid. Especially since I have my own horror story.”
“Did you…”
“Tell him? Yeah. I met him in the coffee shop earlier, by chance, and we talked for a while. He asked questions, so I answered them. He didn’t take it all that well. Sort of freaked, actually. In a very quiet, controlled, lawyerish kind of way. But I saw his face. And he certainly didn’t offer to drive me home.” Her smile was wry. “It was the eye thing that finally got to him. Up until then, he was more or less okay, but that was a bit too much to take.”
“Hollis, I’m sorry.”
“Oh, don’t worry about it. Some things aren’t meant to be, you know? I mean, if he couldn’t accept a little thing like an eye transplant, then it’s a cinch he’d never be comfortable with me talking to dead people.”
“No, probably not.”
“Some people just… can’t think outside the box. You’re lucky Rafe can.”
Isabel was frowning again. Her head tilted a bit, the frown deepening. Absently, she said, “Yes. Yes, I guess I am. The psychic stuff doesn’t throw him at all, and he was more than okay with the rest.”
“So if you can just deal with these control issues of yours, and always assuming we get this killer before he decides to add you to his blonde collection, maybe the universe really is offering you something special. A man who knows what you’ve been through, what you are, and doesn’t mind all the baggage you have to drag around with you.”
“Maybe.”
“At least accept the possibility, Isabel.”
Isabel blinked at her. “Sure. Yes. I can always accept possibilities.”
It was Hollis’s turn to frown. “Are you thinking about the long-term complications of him being settled here and you at Quantico?”
“No. I haven’t gotten that far. I mean, I haven’t really looked past now.”
Hollis studied her. “So what’s bothering you?”
“It’s just… I’m tired. Really tired.”
“I’m not surprised. You need a good night’s sleep.”
Still frowning, Isabel said, “I know I do. I can’t remember ever being this tired. So that’s probably why, right?”
“Why what?”
Softly, Isabel said, “Why I don’t hear the voices. At all.”
12
Sunday, June 15, 10:30 AM
GINNY HUNG UP the phone and frowned at the clock on the wall. Three times. Three times she’d tried to call Tim Helton, hoping his wife might have come home and he just hadn’t thought to report in.
It was after ten-thirty; dairy farmers got up at dawn, she knew that much. Even on Sundays. And Tim Helton wasn’t a churchgoer. Maybe he was out with his cattle. Except he’d given her his cell-phone number and said he always kept it with him. And a body would think he’d be eager to hear whatever the police might have to say about his missing wife. Unless she’d come home.
Or unless he knew she wasn’t going to.
Travis wasn’t at his desk, so Ginny couldn’t ask him, as she usually did, what she should do. This would have to be her call, her decision.
Surprising herself somewhat, Ginny didn’t hesitate. She got to her feet and headed for the closed door of the conference room.
Rafe shut the folder and shoved it toward the center of the conference table. “Okay, so neither the post nor any forensic evidence gathered at the scene has told us much more than we knew yesterday.”
Mallory said, “Well, the doc’s sure she wasn’t bound in any way when she died, and there are absolutely no defensive wounds, so we can reasonably infer she didn’t put up a fight.”
“Yeah,” Rafe said, “but if she was one of Jamie’s partners, submissive might have been her natural state.”
“So she wouldn’t necessarily have fought an attacker,” Isabel agreed. “Still, strangling is up close and personal; if somebody was very obviously trying to kill her, the reflexive survival instinct would have kicked in. At the very least, we should have found some skin cells underneath her fingernails. The fact that we didn’t lends weight to the idea that she didn’t realize what was happening to her until too late.”
Hollis said, “And our killer uses a knife, he doesn’t strangle. So that’s another argument for an accidental death at someone’s hands, probably Jamie’s.”
Mallory added, “Especially since forensics found bits of that old linoleum floor covering embedded in the vic’s knees, which places her in Jamie’s playhouse and in a kneeling, possibly submissive position. Which is, at least, more tangible evidence to confirm what we were pretty sure of but couldn’t have proven in court-that this woman was one of Jamie’s partners.”
“An unlucky one,” Rafe noted. “According to the info we have on the S amp;M scene, strangulation to the point of unconsciousness is fairly common. Supposedly intensifies orgasm.”