Hollis eyed him. “You’re planning on finishing what you started very early this morning, aren’t you?”
“I thought we could.”
“You’re trying to distract me.”
“Well, that too.”
“Not exactly restful,” she pointed out thoughtfully.
“I certainly hope not. But I’ve noticed you do sleep better afterward.”
She couldn’t really argue with that. Not only did she sleep better, it was a very deep and restful sleep. And no nightmares, not when she slept in his arms.
“Sounds great to me,” she told her partner, adding briskly, “Where’s the room service menu?”
* * *
• • •
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 9
Whitney Neele slapped at her alarm early Thursday morning to stop the maddening buzz, trying to pry her eyes open. She had not slept well. In fact, she had not slept well for at least the past week.
Nightmares. Extremely vivid, almost visceral nightmares in which she was always trying to get away from something terrible. To run, to hide. Terror clawing at her mind, at some primitive sense deeper than thought that understood real terror.
And knowing, always knowing, that whatever horrible thing was after her was right behind her, getting closer. Always knowing she couldn’t escape.
Always knowing she was doomed.
Waking exhausted every single morning.
She forced herself to sit up in bed and swing her legs over the side, wincing as the dull throb in her head seemed to swell and pulse with a life all its own.
Goddamn headache.
At first it hadn’t been bad. Just a faint throb, a vague sense of pressure that made her want to yawn the way you do on airplanes. Whitney had figured she was coming down with something, maybe some bug, or just a cold. But the headache was getting worse, and it really didn’t feel like some bug or a cold.
It felt . . . oddly alien.
Something outside herself.
And yet . . . something inside herself as well.
She tried to shake away that feeling, telling herself it was nonsense, that a normal, irritating headache only felt weird now because of everything that had happened yesterday.
The suicide, the murders. The sort of stuff that never happened in peaceful Prosperity. Never. So everyone was naturally on edge, anxious. Afraid. And the talk was already wild. She’d heard at least two people discussing the possibility of magic, for crying out loud.
Whitney sat on the side of the bed for a couple of minutes, elbows on her knees and her hands on either side of her head. It hurt. It hurt and throbbed, and felt like it weighed a ton.
She tried yawning a couple of times, but it didn’t help the sense of pressure. Sure as hell didn’t help the throbbing pain.
Eventually, she got herself out of bed and into the shower, thinking she’d feel better afterward, like she always did. She even washed her hair, less worried about being late than about massaging her head and hoping that would help.
It didn’t.
Worse, the sound of her hair dryer was an oddly muffled roar, and made the throbbing become a pounding. By the time she finished in the bathroom and returned to her bedroom to dress, she felt like banging her head against a wall until the pain stopped.
But she didn’t, of course, and the throbbing continued.
She put on underwear, a pair of nice slacks, and a pretty blouse that didn’t leave too much flesh showing. Couldn’t look too sexy in her job. Nope. Just wasn’t the thing.
Not appropriate.
Which was why she pulled back her hair in a neat, simple style, and used only moisturizer on her face. She’d use the lipstick in her purse later. Lipstick was okay.
She loved her job.
Well, just lately it had been a little annoying, but . . .
She loved her job.
She wondered vaguely why her face looked so flushed in the mirror. So pinkish. Decided it was the fault of the shower’s hot water. She really needed to be more careful about that. Or speak to the super, who also owned the building and didn’t stint on things like hot water.
Maybe too hot.
There was a fine line between water hot enough to wake you up and water hot enough to burn you.
She went into the kitchen and considered options for breakfast. She loved breakfast. Best meal of the day.
Though, lately, her coffeemaker seemed to take forever.
Lately, she didn’t much like even the idea of eggs and turkey bacon, her favorites.
Lately, breakfast was more of a chore.
Her queasy stomach couldn’t face much on this bright—really too bright—coolish October morning.
Probably that bug she was coming down with.
Damned headache.
Goddamned headache.
So she toasted a couple slices of bread while the coffeemaker took forever to do its job. By the time coffee was ready, she’d nibbled about half of one slice of plain toast.
The coffee tasted bitter.
Dammit.
She remembered to turn off the coffeemaker and left the unfinished toast on a bread plate on the kitchen counter.
She had to look for both her work bag—which her father insisted on calling a briefcase—and her keys. The keys she got, everybody mislaid their keys now and then, but she couldn’t figure out how her rather large work bag could go missing so often.
Just lately, it seemed to happen every morning.
Lately, it had gotten really annoying.
She found what she needed, finally. Put on the lightweight, tan trench coat that was her only nice coat because it was just about cool enough for a light coat. Left her apartment, being sure to lock the door behind her. Went down the two flights of stairs to the lobby, wishing there were an elevator. Not that she minded stairs, and of course it was healthier.
But just lately, she would have preferred an elevator.
There was no one in the lobby when she reached it, and she didn’t see any of her neighbors as she went out to the parking lot along one side of the building.
Her head was really hurting.
And why did too many things outside look red?
A tree whose leaves, she was almost certain, had not been red the day before. A red tricycle and red wagon somebody’s kids had left nearly blocking the sidewalk. And when had so many of her neighbors’ cars been red? She hadn’t noticed that before.
It made her head hurt even more.
Whitney found her car, vaguely surprised it wasn’t red. Unlocked it, got in. Started the engine. Obeyed the annoying beep telling her to fasten her seat belt. Then headed out for work.
There wasn’t much traffic, and since this was her second year in her job, the way was so familiar she almost didn’t have to pay attention to the drive. So she let her mind wander, absently reminding herself to not forget the daily chore of going by her father’s house after work to feed his cat since he was down in Florida visiting family.
She thought she wanted to take a look at her father’s gun collection. It hadn’t interested her before, but just lately, she had noticed the gun cabinet. And she had thought about maybe borrowing a gun or two from the case.
She knew how to use them.
And with strange things happening, scary things, maybe having a gun or two would make her feel better. Safer. More able to . . . take care of things on her own.
Absently, she realized she was at work, the Prosperity Elementary School looming up before her. Odd. She hadn’t thought the bricks were so red. Really red. That was odd. She was almost sure it was odd.
Whitney Neele pulled her car into the teachers’ parking lot, and looked for a place, irritated when she couldn’t park close to the building. It was a long walk. Funny, but there seemed to be an awful lot of red cars. She hadn’t r
emembered that so many of her fellow teachers drove red cars. Not that it mattered. Not that it was important.
She loved her job. Loved the kids.
Though, just lately, the kids had been a handful.
Lately, they were misbehaving a lot.
She needed to do something about that.
* * *
• • •
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 9
Hollis had suggested that her team members eat breakfast at the hotel, just as she’d suggested they eat supper there the night before. She knew only too well that gossip had certainly already started about them, at least about her and Reese since they’d arrived in the unmistakable Fedmobile, but she’d told the others that keeping a low profile would be best. For as long as they could.
Staying out of restaurants and attempting to be unobtrusive was at least something, she had told Reese privately. If this energy was being directed toward specific targets, not calling undue attention to themselves might prevent them from becoming victims. Or at least delay that threat.
So they all met up at the sheriff’s department a bit after eight thirty on Thursday morning. There were more deputies in the bullpen than there had been the evening before, and they all looked very tense, though Hollis didn’t sense any hostility aimed at them as she and Reese walked back to the conference room.
All the murders made them tense and anxious, no question about that. Some were still shocked and horrified, others just baffled. But their strongest emotions, Hollis knew, were focused on Deputy Lonnagan.
One of their own had nearly killed his wife the night before, and was even now in a cell in the back, sedated.
Hollis had called in first thing to check, unsurprised but concerned when Katie had told her that Weston was even more of a smiling blank this morning, and that Lonnagan’s terror and anxiety had returned as soon as he’d awakened from his Victoria-induced nap. So the doctor Hollis had suggested had put him back out, chemically this time.
It was a short-term solution.
And she wasn’t at all sure that even finding and fighting the energy would repair the damage already done to those living victims. They might well remain on the destroyed side of the ledger.
The cost of this battle could be very, very high.
They found the others already seated in the conference room, which was different today only in that a large map of the valley had been tacked up onto one of the boards. Her team had obviously been talking to Katie, and the chief deputy immediately pushed a closed folder toward Hollis and DeMarco as they sat down.
“You might want to take a look. Jill’s report on the first death yesterday morning. Or at least the first one we were called to. Sam Bowers.”
“Let me guess,” Hollis said without opening the folder. “Probable suicide, with nothing to indicate the involvement of anyone else.”
“Yep. No forensic evidence anyone else was involved. Only his prints on the gun and on the gun cabinet. She said there was no sign of drugs or alcohol, though she sent blood and tissue samples to the state medical examiner’s office in Chapel Hill to have that verified. Protocol.” She paused, then added, “Jack and I are going to talk to Stacey this morning. She should be calmer now; she’s the sort who will always try to be strong for her kids. Maybe she can tell us something useful.”
Hollis glanced out the open door of the conference room to see the closed door of the sheriff’s office but didn’t ask if he was in yet. Instead, she said, “I know you know this, but try to find out if Mrs. Bowers noticed anything unusual in her husband’s behavior in the week or so before. If he seemed unusually tense or preoccupied. If he said anything that seemed weird to her, out of character. If he complained of headaches or pressure in his head. We need to know if there were any warning signs. I doubt if he was convinced to kill himself over a single night, especially since he clearly struggled against the urges to do more.”
“Just me, not them,” Katie murmured.
Hollis nodded, then looked at them one by one, noting that none of them looked more tense than they had the previous day. But not exactly more relaxed either. “How are you guys holding up?” she asked generally.
“I didn’t sleep much,” Katie confessed. “Probably more because of Jim than anything else. He came out of his nap while I was still here last night, so . . . that’s the memory I went home with. It was not a pleasant memory.”
“I slept okay,” Victoria said. “Never cared much for hotels, but my room was comfortable. Room service was good too.”
“Same here,” Logan said, though a slight frown lingered.
Hollis studied him a moment, then turned her gaze to Galen, who merely said, “I’m fine.”
She was pretty sure Galen would say he was fine no matter how he actually was, but since he was still buttoned up very tightly, she got no sense of his emotions. And since he was in that relatively small percentage of people Reese couldn’t read, she had no idea what he was thinking. He was an experienced agent, and she had to respect his judgment of his own condition. At least unless she saw anything to worry her.
And she really hoped she wouldn’t do that.
Hollis returned her attention to Logan. “Still no spirits?”
“No spirits.” He hesitated, then added, “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but it’s beginning to bug me.” He actually looked a bit embarrassed, which, given his protestations in the past, made perfect sense.
She totally understood. There had been a few times in her SCU career when spirits had, for one reason or another, stopped popping in for a while, and it had bugged her.
“It does feel weird,” she agreed with him calmly. “Once you get used to having spirits around, no matter how much they affect your life, the absence of them just doesn’t feel . . . natural. Like a kind of warning flag from the universe that everything’s out of balance. Probably stronger with you, since you’re a born medium.”
“But I wanted them gone.”
“Yeah,” Hollis said, “but them being gone right now has nothing to do with you getting rid of them.”
His frown deepened as he considered that, and then he sighed. “I guess. A lesson from the universe? Be careful what you ask for, because you might get it?”
“Probably,” Hollis agreed. Then she said briskly, “The others will be arriving later this morning, and the plan is to meet up with them at the hotel around noon. Until then, I think we should be out searching this valley.”
“For what?” Logan asked. “I mean—specifically. Victoria and I can’t see the energy the way you can.”
It was Hollis’s turn to frown. “When Reno told us about her vision, didn’t she say she was warned that the very earth here in Prosperity was about to . . . heave itself open and spill out evil?”
“Yeah. That wasn’t symbolic?”
Victoria spoke up to answer that. “Reno doesn’t have symbolic visions.”
“She doesn’t?”
“No. Always literal. Often . . . exaggerated, she says, but always literal.”
“I hope that one was exaggerated,” Logan muttered. “A lot.”
Hollis nodded a wry agreement, saying, “But we take it literally. Which means we need to be looking for . . . disturbed ground. And that could be anything from a plowed field to an old well, a cave, or any other type of opening in the earth. Especially if it seems recent or just doesn’t look right. Listen to your instincts.”
She turned her chair to face the board and the map hanging there. “I asked Katie to mark the locations of the multiple homicide, the suicide, the Lonnagan house, and the house Weston was showing prospective buyers. Notice anything?”
It was Galen, who had driven all over Prosperity the day before, who answered. “Every location is on the outskirts of town. All outlying neighborhoods.”
“Yeah. And if you draw a line from where the killings began, s
tarting with the Gardner house—since both the sheriff and Katie believe Leslie Gardner killed at least one of her children before Sam Bowers killed himself—you can see that each location is a little closer to town.”
“Oh, man,” Victoria said. “I hope that isn’t as bad as I think it is.”
“This whole damned thing is bad,” Logan reminded her.
“Yeah, but that . . . makes me feel hunted.”
“You should feel that way. Just in case we’re being hunted. Fear sharpens the instincts.” Hollis turned back to face them. “The point is, it doesn’t look as random as we all thought it might be. In spite of how large the total energy field is, whatever is picking targets in Prosperity could have its source outside the town, at the other end of the valley.”
Katie said slowly, “There are a lot of farms and ranches on that end of the valley.”
DeMarco said, “It would probably be a good idea to contact those people. Call if they have a landline. Visit if they don’t. But don’t send a single deputy. Always at least two.”
“To keep an eye on each other,” Katie said.
“It would probably be best. None of us should really be alone out there.” He didn’t look at Galen, even though he and Hollis both knew Galen had never worked with a partner in any true sense and was unlikely to want company while he prowled around.
“Okay. A lot of our people have asked to put in overtime. After Jim . . . Well, they don’t understand what’s happening, but they want to help.”
Hollis said, “Understandable. Problem is, they want to find a bad guy they can put in cuffs and then in a cage. And we just don’t know if that’s what’s behind all this.”
“We’ve got plenty of the normal casework,” Katie said. “Still friends and family of the victims to interview. Neighbors. And now checking on all the places out in the valley. But if we don’t end up with that bad guy, if our people are left with nothing except a lot of unanswered questions, I don’t know how it’ll affect them going forward.”