Текст книги "Fear the Dark"

Автор книги: Kay Hooper

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 15 страниц)

SEVEN

Nobody commented on Jonah’s grim statement. There was a moment of silence, and then Lucas spoke again.

“You’ve already checked into missings for a couple hundred miles all around Serenity, haven’t you?”

Jonah nodded. “Yeah. When Sean Messina was taken. I looked for missings that were in any way like those here. Came up dry. Within a five-hundred-mile radius, there were about a dozen reported missing. A few turned up as bodies, killed accidentally or otherwise; a few are still missing but didn’t just vanish into thin air, and the rest turned up more pissed than grateful that someone had reported them missing and gone looking for them.”

With a sigh, Sam crossed through some of her notes.

“Sorry,” Jonah told her.

“Don’t be. You’ve saved us needless work. And based on that, plus other indicators, we have to assume the guy is here in Serenity, probably grew up here or at least has lived here quite a while, long enough to not stand out as being a newcomer, and that he has a personal reason for taking these people. If you’re abducting people in or close to home, you aren’t taking strangers. It’s too high risk to take people who have or might have a connection to you, especially not just for the sake of taking someone.”

Dante said, “You also aren’t an experienced predator, right? Experienced predators never hunt where they live.”

Sam was nodding. “Almost always the case, yeah. If they’re stranger abductions, we’re dealing with a whole different kind of bad guy.”

“I just . . . I just can’t believe anyone local could be doing this,” Jonah said, still resisting. “How could somebody be this disturbed and go unnoticed? By family, friends, neighbors. By me. How could I not see it?”

“Evil hides,” Sam reminded him. “More often than not, behind something familiar, something nonthreatening. That’s its ace, being able to hide. And . . . most people don’t believe in monsters. So they aren’t looking for one, especially close to home.”

There was a brief silence, with Jonah obviously pondering the existence of human monsters while the feds looked at him with varying degrees of sympathy.

It wasn’t an easy thing to accept, that a monster could walk around in your town looking and acting just like everybody else.

Not an easy thing at all.

Finally, Lucas said, “Your people did very thorough interviews of anyone connected in any way with the missing people, right up to the latest abduction. I assume they’ve been working just as hard on Nessa Tyler’s abduction?”

“Yeah. Everybody I could spare canvassed the neighborhood all day and talked to as many people as we could find who even knew the family. Her teachers and other students at school, every parent who ever had her in their home for a play date. We even checked alibis on the out-of-town relatives who joined the family for support. No flags, no suspicions. Once it got dark, I didn’t want my people out knocking on doors, so they’ve been doing phone interviews all evening. So far, still no red flags. At all.”

Dante asked, “Besides those family members, are there any strangers in town?”

“The four of you. That’s pretty much it.”

Luke asked, “What about Mrs. Lang’s husband? Did family come to Serenity to support him?”

“His family lives in Serenity. His parents, brother, and sister-in-law have been trading off time so he’s never alone and has help with the baby. Neighbors have helped out too. Dave and Luna have always been a very well-liked couple.”

Samantha leaned her chair back, laced her fingers together over her middle, and turned her head to gaze steadily at her husband and partner. “Strike three.”

“What?” Jonah asked, baffled.

Luke said, “Everything we’re hearing, learning, just increases the probability that someone in this town is behind the abductions.”

“How is that possible?” Jonah asked after a moment, still struggling against a reality too painful to readily accept. “One of my neighbors just suddenly decides to abduct people? Someone smart enough or with some kind of weird ability to circumvent security systems, including cameras? And—the weird energy, the missing time, people vanishing into thin air. Plus the strangeness of those photographs Sarah took at the scene where Amy and Simon disappeared.”

He had shared those very odd photographs, and their bafflement over the open car doors not showing, the footprints not showing: seen by their eyes, but not by the lens of a camera.

Samantha said, “No way to explain any of that yet.” But her tone was just a bit elusive.

Jonah looked at her. “All of you looked at those pictures, and all of you seemed as baffled as Sarah and me. Have you come up with a theory or something since?”

With a shrug, Sam said, “Just something I’m mulling in my mind. It may turn out to be worse than useless, so I’d rather make sense of it myself before offering it even as a theory.”

“Sam, you know profiling, investigating, is a collaborative effort,” her husband said matter-of-factly.

“Yeah, I know. I just . . . want to sit with this awhile longer myself. At this point, it’s just a cockeyed theory with absolutely no evidence to back it up.”

“Don’t wait too long,” Luke advised her.

“No, I won’t.”

Robbie said, “In any case, it’s pretty clear a stranger would stand out in Serenity, in the day or the night, especially given the likelihood that he watched the victims for quite some time before he put his plan into action.”

Lucas nodded. “Jonah, you and your people have talked to just about everyone in town, and you said it yourself: Aside from us and Tyler family members with alibis, there just aren’t any strangers here.”

Making a last-ditch protest, Jonah said, “You’re telling me someone I know is doing this?”

“Know in the broadest sense, probably,” Luke said. “Even in a town this small, there are bound to be people on the periphery of your life. Not friends or neighbors or coworkers. Maybe you’d recognize a face, or even know a name, but not really give them much thought because your life and theirs haven’t really intersected. There’s been nothing to make them memorable. Maybe they live a bit farther out, don’t come into town too often. Don’t get into trouble or otherwise draw your attention.

“We all have people like that in our lives. Vague recognition, but no interest. No real knowledge. What may be vitally important to them, an experience, an event, could easily be something that barely scratched the surface of your life. And whoever this is, he probably learned early how to go unnoticed. Maybe he grew up in an abusive home, and drawing attention meant a beating. He learned to be quiet, still. To blend in. At a guess, he’s in his thirties or forties; he’s too patient and too careful to be younger.”

Samantha took up the not-quite-musing, her voice as thoughtful as Luke’s had been. “The judge wasn’t a small man, and both Sean Messing and Simon Church were in good shape, athletic. So this guy has to be able to handle size and muscle, either with his own muscles or by some other means.”

“A gun?” Jonah suggested.

It was Robbie who said, “Six people . . . a child, a teenager, a young wife and mother; I’m betting at least one of them would have cried out, made some kind of commotion, if they’d seen a gun. The men probably would have struggled, one of them at least. Hunting is common in this area, right?”

Jonah nodded.

“Then so are guns. Especially these days. We don’t fear what’s familiar, as a rule, at least not quickly enough to react. Besides . . . the judge was out in the open. The two teenagers in a stopped car with no sign of damage to indicate someone forced them to stop. Luna Lang crossed through about fifteen feet of a security blind spot and vanished. Sean Messing in a theater. I just . . . I just can’t believe that every single one of them could have been taken by force, without any kind of a fuss and without leaving some kind of evidence of that behind.”

“It doesn’t seem likely,” Luke agreed.

“So,” Samantha said, “we’re back to trying to figure out what all these missing people had in common.”

With a sigh, Jonah said, “I thought we were doing that.”

“We were. But I’m reasonably sure all of us kept in our heads the notion that these people were taken by a stranger, because even though stranger unsubs are more difficult to find, let alone capture, it’s the monsters hiding in plain sight that frighten us the most, because we don’t know who to trust—even when the faces are familiar.

“Now we have to consider what a member of your community might have in common with these missing people when viewed by one of their own neighbors. Somebody they all know. Somebody who may have been watching them for years.”

Jonah was startled. “Years?”

“Without knowing what he’s doing to these people, it’s almost impossible to theorize. But given that we believe he’s a local, and somehow connected to these missing people, the chances are good that whatever’s driving him has been in him for a long time. Could be a mental disorder, but I would have expected that to manifest before now, and obviously; you or someone else would have noticed. So it could be simple resentment or hate.”

“Those kids didn’t do anything to make somebody hate them,” Jonah objected. “Not the teenagers, and certainly not Nessa Tyler.”

“It only has to make sense to him,” Dante spoke up to say. “A madman has his own mad logic.”

Slowly, Luke said, “The one answer we need as soon as possible is, for now, at least, the hardest one to figure out. We don’t know why he wanted these people. I’ve never heard of a serial abductor except for the few who abduct kids or teenage girls and keep them literally in bondage, for years.”

“Saw the most recent one like that on the news,” Jonah said, looking a bit queasy.

“There have been worse cases. When abduction or even slavery isn’t the goal, but murder is. Torture is. What really doesn’t fit here is the range of victims. We’ve got three men if we count Simon Church, two women if we count Amy Grimes, and a ten-year-old girl. I’ve never heard of any serial killer with tastes that broad in his victims.”

“Which,” Dante said, “is yet another argument that this is personal. These people were targeted.”

“Yeah,” Samantha said, “but for what? What did they do to get on this guy’s radar?”

Lucas said, “We don’t know if they’re dead or alive. If they’re dead, where are the bodies? If they’re alive, where is he keeping them? How is he controlling them? It’s been weeks for the teenagers; is he feeding them? Torturing them? In a town so tense the slightest sound draws instant attention, why has no one heard anything, or seen anything the least bit suspicious?”

Samantha said, “He has to have a fair amount of room, and it has to be a remote location . . .”

–

IT WAS THE strangest thing, Robbie decided. The room around her, brightly lit, just faded out, darkening around the edges. The darkness slowly crept toward her, and she couldn’t move, couldn’t ask the others if they couldn’t see what was happening.

Couldn’t help her stop it.

The darkness was going to swallow her up, she knew that, felt it, and watched helplessly as it swallowed up the others one by one, creeping up to them, over them, like some hideous black sludge, moving in terrifying slow motion, until they vanished and only the black was left. Only the darkness. She could hear her heart beating, but nothing else.

Nothing except the eerie sounds of that thick, smothering darkness flowing toward her, rustling softly as though it were whispering to her.

It was . . . almost seductive.

Wait for me.

Can you hear me? I know you can. You aren’t like the others.

We can . . . together . . . and we . . .

. . . belong together . . . you know . . .

. . . we do . . .

Listen to me . . .

She didn’t know where it came from, but Robbie was aware of the certain knowledge that if she listened to the whispers, if she let them in, she would die.

The blackness was creeping toward her, rustling, whispering, and all Robbie could think to do was slam her shields up as hard as she could, making them as strong as she could make them, because she couldn’t let it in . . .

–

“DANTE IS A medium,” Luke was saying. “Able to communicate with the dead. When they want to communicate, that is. And even then, they often have nothing helpful to say. Something else we’ve learned.”

What? We’ve already talked about this. Haven’t we?

Half nodding, Dante said, “The universe doesn’t like to make things too easy for us, apparently. Even with these extra senses of ours, we still have to work to get what we want and need.”

Wait a minute. I know we’ve talked about this. Because Jonah was curious and didn’t seem freaked out. Though right now . . .

Jonah nodded, more uncertain than anything else.

Maybe he’s more freaked out than he shows. Maybe he always was.

“Robbie is a telepath, able to read minds,” Luke said. “Not all minds, of course; even our strongest telepaths can only read sixty to seventy percent of those around them. Sort of like trying to tune in on a particular radio frequency; not all people are on a frequency a particular telepath can receive.”

What the hell . . .

Without any ability at all to stop it, Robbie heard herself saying, “Like all of us here, and most agents in the SCU, I have mental shields, so I can generally block out thoughts even on my frequency when I want to. And I usually want to, in case you were wondering. I believe it’s an invasion of privacy to read someone else’s thoughts without their knowledge or permission.” She sounded more than a little defiant.

Wait. I got over that. Got past it. Mostly. Didn’t I? Because it’s the work, just like Bishop said. It’s a tool I use in the work, to help put the bad guys away.

Luke said, “Robbie is our problem child; she’s still trying to decide if her abilities are a gift or a curse.”

No, I’m not!

Robbie felt weirdly detached from what was happening, and yet she knew she felt irritation when she said, that other Robbie said, “They aren’t a gift or a curse, they’re just abilities natural to me. And I just have to practice more to use them effectively. Miranda said so. And Bishop. Besides, Dante is the problem child. He really doesn’t want to talk to dead people.”

Not really arguing, Dante said, “Well, it’s unsettling.”

“I can imagine,” Jonah said, his expression saying he really, really couldn’t.

All right, this has to stop. Because it didn’t happen, not like this. I’m positive it didn’t happen like this. He’s trying to trick me, that’s what it is. Trying to . . . what is he trying to do? Pull me into a different time? A different . . . reality?

Is that even possible?

Does it have anything to do with losing time in the bubbles of energy?

If I concentrate really hard, I can stop this. Him. I can push back the darkness. I can. I know I can.

Robbie concentrated as hard as she could, putting everything she had into shoring up her shields. And even so, even with everything she had, there was an instant when the darkness around her swirled suddenly in iridescent flashes, shifted—

And she was standing on the sidewalk of downtown Serenity, in the shadows of a dark building. Now, or on a different, equally dark night. She wanted immediately to move, to get to the pool of light up ahead, the light from one of the old-fashioned streetlamps.

But she couldn’t move a muscle.

She could hear her heart beating again, hear her own gasping breaths—and then she realized that wasn’t her, she wasn’t hearing herself, she—

The woman staggered into the pool of light, both her hands at her throat. A strange gurgling sound came from behind her hands, and for a moment it seemed she would turn and stare at Robbie, something Robbie hoped desperately would not happen. Because she couldn’t look away, she could only stare at the woman as she sort of tilted, like her balance was affected by something.

And then she just dropped, the light hitting her in such a way that she was unrecognizable as anything but a heap of darkness in the vague shape of something human.

–

“WHAT?” ROBBIE BLINKED, looked around the room. The bright, becoming-familiar room of their makeshift command center.

She looked down to see a hand on her arm, and followed it up to focus on Dante’s concerned face.

“Hey,” he said. “Where did you go?”

She didn’t find the question strange—which was strange, or should have been.

“How long was I . . . away?” she asked.

Dante looked across the table, and she followed his gaze to see familiar faces and a puzzled Jonah-face that was becoming familiar.

Sam answered her question, saying simply, “About five minutes.”

“It seemed longer,” Robbie said, dimly astonished at her own calm voice. “It really seemed a lot longer than that.”

“You don’t have visions,” Dante said.

Robbie thought about it, nodded slowly. “Yeah. But that’s not what it was.”

“Then what was it?” Luke asked.

Robbie spared a moment to recognize that as hard as she’d tried for most of her life to not use the psychic abilities she’d been born with, it was immeasurably comforting to be among people who were utterly matter-of-fact about such abilities.

“I think . . . I think he’s psychic.”

“The unsub?” Sam asked.

“Yeah.”

“What?” If anything, Jonah looked horrified.

“He got into my head. Not all the way, just . . . far enough. He tried to trick me. Tried to convince me that things . . . didn’t happen the way I remember them happening. Us talking. About our abilities. And I knew that if I let him do that, let him convince me what he showed me was real, then he’d win.”

“What would he win?” Dante asked.

“Me.” Robbie nodded slowly. “Me. He was . . . it was a test. To see if he could control me. Like he controlled them.”

–

AMY GRIMES FELT as if she had been . . . sleepwalking. All her senses were deadened, dull, and her memories were awfully fuzzy. She remembered leaving town with Simon.

Starting to leave town.

And then . . . nothing.

Or at least nothing she could hold on to. Thoughts and scenes and sensations flitted through her mind, some bright, some dark, and she didn’t know which of them were real.

It took all her effort, everything she had, to force her eyes open, and when she did, the scared little girl who lived always in the back of her mind flinched, then whimpered.

It was dark.

Darker than dark. Darker than dark could ever be. The darkness had substance, weight. It smothered sound. It had power.

Power to hold her. Because she couldn’t move, no matter how hard she tried. She thought she was moving her eyes, darting them around, seeking even a sliver of light, but she wasn’t sure that was what she was doing because the darkness never changed.

There was no light.

There was no escape.

She didn’t even know if she was alone here. Wherever here was. She had no sense of anyone near, heard no sound—

Simon. Was he here? Was he close?

She wanted to call for him, to make some kind of sound, but she was still unable to move. Unable even to open her mouth. The whimper of that little girl in her mind was trapped in her head. And even that was growing fainter. Fainter.

Amy had the dim sense, suddenly, of someone else. Someone who, like that terrified little girl, was in her mind. Someone who had abruptly taken notice of her, as if he had been distracted for a time and only just realized she was aware.

Impossibly, the darkness got even darker, heavier, until Amy didn’t think she was even able to breathe. It was in her mind, and it covered over thoughts and questions and panic and fear. It covered over the whimpering little girl.

It covered over everything, black and powerful.

Until Amy wasn’t even aware of herself anymore.

Until she was . . . until she was . . .

Gone.

EIGHT

Jonah leaned forward at that, his expression shifting from horrified to questioning, intent. “Them? You mean my missing people?”

“I think so. I was trying to block him, trying to shore up my shields. And he was testing them, my shields. He tried to scare me. He tried to make me feel helpless. Then it was almost like . . . seduction. Promises. Like he thought he could tempt me.”

“To go to him?” Luke asked.

“To give way to him. To let him control me.” Robbie drew a breath and let it out slowly, really beginning to understand. “Another SCU agent told me that during a few cases over the years, there had been some . . . He said Bishop called them minor skirmishes. Of mind control. But that they’d only seen it between two psychics who were either deeply bonded or related by blood. And even then it was always an uncertain thing, impossibly difficult to control.”

Luke was nodding. “Bishop’s never been completely convinced it’s even true mind control. He thinks it’s like hypnosis. We can’t be hypnotized, but another psychic, with the right abilities, could . . . manipulate our reality. In theory.”

Robbie jabbed her index finger in his general direction. “Yes. It was like that. I saw and heard myself, and you guys, having a conversation I know we never had, at least not like that. But it was so real. And I was fighting so hard to push him out, using all my strength, that when I finally did—it was like a rubber band snapping. I wasn’t in that reality he created, and I wasn’t here . . .”

She turned her head and looked toward the big window whose new blinds protected them from the curious gazes of passersby. “I was . . . out there. Like I overshot, somehow. I was on Main Street, just around the corner, in the shadows of a dark building. But I could see ahead of me the light from a streetlamp.”

“Robbie?” Dante’s voice held concern. “You’ve gone pale.”

She tried to get a hold on herself. “Yeah. Um . . . I saw something, and I’m honestly not sure if it was real or—or something he threw at me in that last minute.”

“What did you see?” Jonah asked, still intent.

I like him better here in my reality, where he’s not freaked out by what I can do.

She tried to ignore that realization. “I saw a woman. She sort of staggered out of the darkness between two buildings and into the circle of light on the sidewalk.”

“Who was she?”

“I wasn’t close enough to see. Or maybe it was the dark, and the light falling the wrong way. I don’t know. She had her hands up to her throat, and I heard a sound coming from her. An awful sound. She seemed to lose her balance. And then she just dropped like a stone.”

“Robbie—”

“I don’t know who she was, but I know she was dead. I know he killed her. I just don’t know if it was real.” She hesitated, then said, “I think . . . I think she’s dead because she was in the way. He had to be close to try to manipulate my mind. He had to be close, and she almost caught him. Maybe she did catch him. Maybe that’s why he killed her. She caught him, and he didn’t have time to do anything else. Didn’t have time to control her. So he had to kill her.”

Jonah was beginning to look uneasy. Very uneasy. “I think maybe we’d better walk out to Main Street.”

“I think you’re right,” Luke said, getting to his feet.

Rather desperately, Robbie said, “It might not have been real. It might have just been another trick. And even if it wasn’t, I can’t swear that it was even here, in Serenity.”

Sam said, “You’re a telepath; have you ever found yourself, even in spirit, somewhere else?”

“No,” Robbie said slowly. “No, this is the first time anything like that ever happened.”

“Then,” Luke said, “odds are, it was our unsub. And if it was, we need to understand as much as we can about his abilities pronto. But first, we need to find out if what you saw is real.”

Samantha and Dante were also getting to their feet, all of them adjusting or just touching the guns they wore in a kind of automatic reassurance.

“We need to be sure, Robbie,” Sam said.

Robbie pushed her chair back and stood, vaguely surprised that her own hand reached to touch her gun; she hadn’t thought about her training, about the familiarity created by hours and hours of practice at the gun range. She hadn’t wanted to carry a gun, but now she was very glad she did.

And that she knew how to use it.

–

JONAH GOT TO her first, while the others, guns drawn, scanned the area all around the streetlight. The downtown area was still quiet and still, and for now at least all the light came from the streetlights and the flashlights all of them carried.

Robbie stepped closer to Jonah, who was kneeling beside the woman. Her body was positioned so that it had required the light from his flashlight to show them she was indeed dead, her throat slashed from ear to ear and a pool of blood all around her upper body.

“Who is it, Jonah?” Robbie couldn’t see her face, mostly because she hadn’t been able to look too closely.

“Annie Duncan.” Jonah sat back on his heels, the streetlight’s glow making his face look gaunt. Or maybe it wasn’t the streetlight. And it was as if all the feeling had been squeezed out of his voice. “She was one of my officers.”

Lucas seemed to flow out of the shadows to join them. “Sam and Dante are checking the other side of the alley, but so far the only thing visible is some blood.” He paused, holstering his weapon, then added unemotionally, “Arterial spray on the wall, looks like. The unsub must have cut her throat in the alley, then let her go. She couldn’t have walked more than a few steps. In fact, I’m surprised she made it this far.”

“Why was she here at all?” Robbie asked. “She isn’t in uniform, but I don’t remember her being one of your plainclothes cops.”

He didn’t really have those, Jonah reflected, glad for something to occupy his mind. Unless he or Sarah decided to work out of uniform, which was the norm for him and an occasional thing for her. Otherwise, other than Jean at reception, and a couple of other non-cop administration people who only worked part-time, all Jonah’s people wore uniforms.

“She shouldn’t be here,” he said finally, without looking up at Robbie or Lucas. “She was one of a handful who’d been working the phones since dark and on duty since the first shift. I’d told her and a couple of others to go home and get some sleep.”

“When was that?” Luke asked.

“When I checked in at the station on my way to get our takeout. I double-checked on the way back, and they’d all gone home. Or, at least, weren’t at the station.”

“That was a bit after seven,” Luke said. “It’s nearly ten o’clock now. She should have gotten home.”

“I sent them in pairs,” Jonah said automatically. “If one of them lived alone, the other officer was to go in with them and check out the place, just to be sure. Annie lived alone.”

“Who took her home?”

“Adam Sheffey. He’s married with a couple of toddlers—and had one hell of a security system installed barely a week ago. Also has a very protective family dog.” Jonah shook his head slightly. “He’s a good cop. He would have checked out Annie’s place thoroughly before leaving her alone there.”

“She’s out of uniform,” Robbie repeated. “She must have gotten home safely, Jonah. Had time to change. Maybe she came back out to get something to eat.”

He was shaking his head. “She enjoyed cooking. When the rest of her shift would send out for a pizza or some other takeout, she’d always have something homemade in the break room fridge. Usually somebody tried to wheedle her into swapping takeout for her food, because she was such a good cook.”

“What other reason would she have to come back here?” Robbie asked. “Far as I can see, she isn’t even carrying her sidearm.”

“I can’t think of a reason. She’s been a cop ten years; she’d know better than to come out, alone and unarmed, at a time like this.”

Dante and Samantha rejoined them then, both holstering their weapons.

“Nothing,” Dante reported to Lucas. “It’s all pavement or gravel, and other than what was in the alley, there’s no sign of blood. No footprints either, bloody or otherwise.”

“I can get Sully out with his dogs,” Jonah said, more or less automatically.

“There might be a faster way,” Samantha said.

–

HE WATCHED THEM from his vantage point, unsurprised that they moved as easily as any well-practiced team. They didn’t stop to gather any of Chief Riggs’s people, which gave him pause. He would have expected the telepath among them to be weakened by his attack.

Uncertain, at the very least. Bothered. Unwilling to trust her own instincts and thoughts and urges.

But she seemed very focused and very certain, leading them cautiously but steadily along Main Street until they reached the circle of light from a streetlamp.

And the crumpled body of a woman on the cold concrete sidewalk.

He wanted to linger, to watch them work the scene. He wanted to know if they used standard police work or their extra senses. He really wanted to get a better idea of what those other senses consisted of. Besides the telepath. But her steadiness made him feel just a bit uneasy about remaining so close to her.

She was strong. Stronger than he had expected.

And he wasn’t quite certain what that would mean.

But for now, for this night, he knew that if he wanted his work to continue, he needed to fade back into the night. And possibly reconsider his options.

Because he had connected with the telepath’s mind. He wasn’t sure if she knew what that meant.

But he knew.

–

“NO WAY IN hell,” Lucas said with some force.

Samantha’s tone was calm and reasonable. “It’s the quickest way, and you know it. Maybe I’ll get a sense of the unsub and maybe not, but at least we can find out why Annie was out here when she should have been safely locked in at home.”

“It’s too dangerous, Sam. She’s dead. Last time you tried something like this, it nearly killed you.”

“That was different.”

“Was it?”

“Luke, we don’t have time to argue. With every moment that passes, the energy in her brain dissipates more. If I wait too long her memories will be out of reach forever.”

Robbie was looking at Dante. “You don’t get a sense of the recently dead, do you?”

He shook his head. “Not so far.” He didn’t look too eager to try this time.

“It’s safer if I try.” Samantha was still looking at her partner and husband. “I’ve been at this a lot longer. I have more control.”

Not entirely sure what was going on, Jonah said, “You aren’t a medium too, are you?”

“No. But a clairvoyant can often pick up energy from a crime scene. Or a death scene. Even a dying brain has energy. Maybe especially a dying brain. Our brains have energy, electrical impulses, and they don’t just stop the way a heart stops. It takes a few minutes for that energy to dissipate. Luke, I have to try and you know it.”