“Probably.”
“Still no voices, huh?”
“No. I thought getting away from everybody might help, but it didn’t.”
“Was anything different when Rafe was close by?”
“No. Just silence, same as when he isn’t close by. Exactly the way it’s been since last night.” Isabel glanced at her partner, mouth twisting slightly. “I’d thought the peace and quiet would be nice. I was wrong. This just feels… bad. Not natural. I even miss the damned headache. A part of me has suddenly gone deaf, and I don’t know why.”
“It must have something to do with the sparking thing between you and Rafe, right?”
“I don’t know. As far as I can remember, nothing like this has happened to any psychic. I mean, our abilities can change, but this drastically and suddenly to a reasonably stable and well-established psychic? Not without some… trigger. Some cause. It just doesn’t make sense.”
“You still haven’t called Bishop?”
Isabel shook her head. “They’re wrapped up in their own investigation out there and don’t need a distraction.”
“You just don’t want him to pull you.”
“Well, yeah, there’s that. I don’t really think he would, not at this stage, but he worries whenever any of us have problems with our abilities. Unforeseen problems, I mean.”
Hollis hesitated, then said, “How can you be sure this is an unforeseen problem? I mean, Bishop and Miranda see the future on a fairly regular basis. What if they saw this?”
Isabel considered it, then shrugged and said wryly, “That is more than possible. It wouldn’t be the first time they’d seen something ahead in the road for one of us-and just let us stumble forward blindly. Some things have to happen just the way they happen.”
“Our mantra.”
“More or less. You know, I half expected Bishop to call last night, since he always does seem to know whenever something’s gone wrong. So maybe this isn’t as wrong as I feel like it is. Or maybe he knows and also knows I have to figure out my own way through it.”
“Are you going to tell Rafe?”
“Sooner or later I’ll have to. Unless he picks up on it himself. Which is also possible.”
“Yeah, he’s very… tuned in where you’re concerned. I mean, it’s obvious. I think he knew before I did in Jamie’s playhouse that it was going to be too much for you. He kept watching you.”
“I know.”
“You felt that even with all the voices coming at you?”
“I felt it. Him. He wanted to protect me. To keep me from being hurt.”
Hollis lifted both eyebrows. “And now you don’t hear the voices. You’re protected from them. Coincidence? I sort of doubt it.”
“Rafe isn’t psychic. He couldn’t have done this.”
Hollis thought about it, then shook her head. “Maybe not consciously, even if he’s a latent. But what if it’s a combination of factors?”
“Such as?”
“Such as his desire to shield you and the way his and your electromagnetic fields react to each other. It really could be pure basic chemistry and physics, at least the beginning of it.”
Isabel frowned. “Even without a shield of my own, I had the training in how to use one. I know how to reach out, break through a barrier. I know what a shield should be, even if I’ve never had one. This… doesn’t feel like a barrier. It’s not something I can control.”
“It’s new. Maybe you have to get used to it before you can. Or maybe…”
“… it’s not mine to control,” Isabel finished.
“If Rafe is a latent, or was, it could be his to control. You didn’t pick up any sense that he might be when you first read him?”
“No.”
“Nothing unusual at all?”
“No. At least… He’s very strong. And not very easy to read except for surface, trivial things. I didn’t get the sense he was blocking me, but at the same time I felt there was a lot of him I just couldn’t get at.”
“Didn’t you tell me his grandmother was psychic?”
“Yeah.”
“Then if I remember what I was taught in the training sessions, there’s a better than average chance he could be a latent.”
“In our experience, yes. It often runs in families.”
“Isn’t that the most likely explanation for all this? That he is, or was, a latent and that the way you two reacted to each other somehow activated it and made him a functional psychic, even if only on an unconscious level?”
“So far, everything we’ve seen and experienced tells us that activating a latent ability requires a traumatic event.”
“Maybe Rafe will add something different to that experience.”
“Maybe.”
“You could ask him.”
“Ask him if he’s psychic? Oh, he’ll love that.”
“If he is, and functional, he needs to know. He needs to begin learning how to control what he can do. Especially since he may be shielding you. That urge to protect you may have him wrapping you in psychic cotton wool. A nice respite for you, at least in theory, but we do need your abilities to help us find and catch this killer.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
Hollis pushed her sunglasses to the top of her head and studied her partner thoughtfully. “Maybe when you and Rafe connected, you did it in an unusual way, something every bit as direct and potent as actual physical contact-and magnified by sheer power. That sparking thing we all find so fascinating. Maybe it created a link between you.”
“It didn’t create a shield. I’ve told you, at first it was just a slight and gradual muffling of the voices. It wasn’t until last night that the voices suddenly went silent.”
“It was sudden? You didn’t tell me that. Can you remember exactly what was happening when you lost them?”
Isabel had to think about it, but only for a moment. Slowly, she said, “Actually, it’s so clear I don’t know why I didn’t notice it at the time. Because I was so tired, I suppose. I thought it was that. And the relief.”
“Relief?”
“That he didn’t draw away. I told him all about my chamber of horrors, and he didn’t draw away. In fact, he reached out to me. Physically. And that’s when the voices went silent.”
“Travis, any luck reaching Kate Murphy’s sister in California?” Mallory asked.
Without needing to check the notes on his legal pad, Travis shook his head. “Nada. It’s awfully early on a Sunday out there, so you’d think she’d be home, but if so she isn’t answering her phone.”
“Machine or voice mail picking up?”
“No, it just rings.”
“Shit. I thought everybody had voice mail.”
“Guess not.”
“Well, keep trying.” Mallory headed back toward her own desk, pausing as she passed Ginny to ask, “Still nothing new on Rose Helton?”
“I finally got hold of her brother in Columbia, and he says last he heard, Rose was happy on the farm with Tim. No family occasions or visits to other relatives that he knows of. He didn’t even know Rose wasn’t home. Until he talked to me.”
Mallory grimaced. “I hate it when that happens. When we’re following up leads or looking for them-and shatter somebody’s day, possibly their life, with news they really don’t want to hear. That is never fun.”
“I’ll say. Oh-and for what it’s worth, it doesn’t seem to have even occurred to Rose’s brother that her husband might have had something to do with her disappearance.”
“That might be worth a lot. Relatives often know, even if only subconsciously, if there’s trouble in a marriage.”
“He obviously thinks not. In fact, he asked immediately if we thought it was this serial killer, even though Rose isn’t really a blonde.”
“Come again?”
“Apparently, the last time he saw Rose at Christmas, she was blond. Trying it out, he said.”