Except for the gun he held, cocked and ready, at Bonnie's temple.
Bonnie was clearly frightened but amazingly calm, pale but not crying. She even attempted a smile at her sister, obviously wanting to reassure her that she was okay.
Miranda had a sudden, overwhelming sense that this was the place she had seen in her vision, and she had a helpless awareness of fate rushing, of events carrying her toward whatever destiny was intended for her. She didn't look toward Bishop, but she was very conscious of their connection, and of his absolute certainty that she would not die here.
Still, she knew that if what she had seen was right, the abrupt severing of their link could be as devastating for the living as the dead; gently and without warning, she closed the door on her side.
“You might want to drop the guns,” MacBride suggested.
Neither of them hesitated. They dropped their guns. Not only because of the gun he was holding to Bonnie's temple but also because of what he held in his other hand. It was obviously an explosive device—some kind of small but undoubtedly deadly grenade, with the pin out.
A dead man's switch.
“Kick them toward me,” he instructed.
They did so, and when MacBride gestured commandingly with the gun, Bishop moved closer to Miranda until he was hardly more than a couple of yards away from her. MacBride could cover them both easily now. They were facing him across fifteen feet or so of rotting mulch and little else, with the tangled jungle all around them seeming to hover, to press inward. That and the sour smell of rotting vegetation made the place feel so claustrophobic it was difficult to breathe.
Or maybe, Miranda thought, that was just her terror. It clogged her throat, cold and sour. And her heart thudded against her ribs with heavy urgency.
She had promised to protect her sister. She had sworn.
Bonnie's hands were tied behind her back, her ankles tied together. She was completely helpless. And she looked very small to her sister, very fragile. She still wasn't crying, but there was something resigned about her calm, something fatalistic.
Miranda hadn't told her all that she'd seen, but she had always suspected Bonnie had guessed the rest.
Conversationally, MacBride said to them, “I keep asking her if she can really talk to the dead. But she won't tell me. I thought it was Liz, you know, when I heard the story that night at her coffeeshop. I thought she had helped you, had told you where to find Steve's body. But it wasn't Liz. Poor Liz.”
“You made a mistake.” Miranda was surprised her voice sounded so calm. “Don't make another one, John.”
“I didn't want to hurt Liz. I liked her. You know I liked her, Randy. But what choice did I have? I was careful with her. And I didn't take anything.” His tone was reasonable but held a hint almost of pleading, as though for her approval.
Miranda tried not to gag. “You mean no body parts or blood? That was big of you, John.”
“You don't understand,” he said, shaking his head.
“Then make me. Make me understand.” She had no idea if it was even wise to keep him talking, but a glance had shown her that Bishop's expression was unreadable, so she was following her instincts.
“You're a cop, you know all about the need to deal with threats,” MacBride said. “Liz was a threat.”
“No, you only thought she was. And you were wrong.” She saw a faint quiver disturb his complacency, and concentrated on that chink in his armor. “You were wrong,John.”
He smiled suddenly. “I know what you're trying to do, Randy. But it won't work. I'm sorry about Liz, but that's past now. Done. This”—he gave Bonnie a little pat, almost friendly—“is hardly a mistake. I can learn so much from Bonnie.”
“No. You—”
“Because if she can talk to the dead, that opens up a whole new avenue to explore. I've been thinking about it for some time, you know, about what to do next. I'd already realized I couldn't go on finding my subjects around here.”
Your subjects? But Miranda couldn't say it, couldn't force a word out. Her fear was choking her again.
Bishop either knew or guessed, because he spoke up then, his voice steady. “Because you knew them. Knew their names, their faces. Their mothers and fathers.”
MacBride responded to that easily, almost eagerly. “That proved to be … surprisingly difficult. Adam wasn't so bad, the sneaky little bastard, but Kerry … she kept crying and asking me why. And then there was Lynet, little Lynet…. I liked her.”
“But you killed her anyway,” Bishop said.
“I had to. Once I'd taken her, well… she had seen me. I couldn't let her go. But I made sure she didn't suffer.”
Miranda swallowed hard and said, “That might earn you a cooler corner of hell, but I doubt it.”
“You still don't understand. It was research, Randy, that's all. Study.”
“To figure out what makes bodies tick? Sorry, John, but medical science has pretty much got that pegged.”
“Do you think so? I don't agree. There's still so much to learn. I wanted to learn.” His expression darkened for the first time. “I wanted to be a doctor. But they said my grades weren't good enough in college. My grades. Idiots. I've learned more on my own than any school could have taught me. All it took was a certain amount of … detachment.”
Bishop said, “We've been wondering about something. Why take the blood?”
Not at all reluctant to supply the information, MacBride said, “I was working on various ways to naturally preserve organs and flesh. I thought blood might do it. But I haven't found quite the right combination of blood and chemicals just yet.”
Bishop nodded gravely. “So I guess you were experimenting with the chemicals when you discovered how to age bones?”
MacBride shrugged dismissively. “I used the chemicals to clean the bones, but I noticed how it aged them. I wondered how the formula would affect a living subject, so I tried it on Adam. I'm afraid it was very painful—but he deserved it, the little sneak.”
“He found out about you.”
“Little sneak. Poking his nose into places he had no business being. If he'd just done the yard work I hired him for, everything would have been fine. But, no, he had to snoop. He took my knife. One of my jars. Other things, probably.” MacBride laughed suddenly. “The little bastard wanted to blackmail me, can you believe that? Wanted me to pay him to keep his mouth shut.”
“So you killed him,” Bishop said. “But he didn't talk, did he, MacBride? He didn't tell you where he'd hidden the things he took from you.”
“No. He seemed to have it in his head that as long as he had that stuff hidden he'd be all right in the end. Idiot.” MacBride shifted slightly and, perhaps tired of remaining in the position, stepped back away from Bonnie. He didn't push her to the ground so much as guide her down with his gun hand until she was sitting. He kept his gaze steadily on the two people in front of him.
Miranda wanted to go to her sister so badly that she could feel her muscles tensing, and forced herself to relax as much as she was able. It wasn't time to act. Not yet.
MacBride no longer held the pistol to Bonnie's head, but he still had the grenade.
He straightened, the gun held negligently but not so carelessly as to offer Miranda any hope. “Of course, I didn't like not knowing where the stuff was, but that kid was so sly and sneaky, I doubted he'd told anyone about it.”
“A chance you were prepared to take,” Bishop said. “Until Steve told you he had it.”
“He didn't mean to tell me,” MacBride said with a shrug. “It was an accident, really—a very fortunate accident. I ran into him in front of the drugstore, and he asked me about the knife. He knew I collected them, so he thought I could tell him who else in town did. I said I had a collectibles catalog in my car, and he went with me to see it. After that, it was easy.”
“Too easy,” Bishop said. “You hit him too hard.”
“Well, I figured the kid would have a thick skull, as big as he was. I was wrong,
worse luck.” He frowned suddenly and glanced down at Bonnie, his thoughts obviously having come full circle. “I was surprised when you found him so soon, before I wanted you to. But if she did it… that does open up new possibilities. Maybe I don't need lots of other subjects. Maybe just one will do.”
Miranda felt a chill so icy that she went cold to her bones. Bonnie in the hands of this madman, the subject of his insane “research” for God only knew how long?
No.
“She can't help you,” Miranda said.
“She can if she can really talk to the dead,” MacBride said in a reasonable tone. He seemed undisturbed as he put the pin back in the grenade and dropped it negligently into the mulch. “That's an aspect of the human experience I haven't explored yet. I understand the death of the flesh, but not what happens to the mind and spirit.” He glanced down at Bonnie. “Is there a heaven? A hell? A God?”
Very quietly, Bonnie answered, “All three.”
That reply startled Miranda, but MacBride was, for the first time, visibly shaken.
“You're lying,” he accused, his eyes now shifting back and forth between his captive and the pair facing him.
“No.” Bonnie's voice was still quiet. She even smiled. “It's the truth. Didn't you know? Didn't you realize there'd be judgment and punishment?”
Miranda had to bite her lip to keep from saying, Be careful! Don't push him too far! Don't frighten him!
Obviously trying to recapture his earlier clinical tone and only partially succeeding, MacBride said, “Your brain must be different if you can talk to the dead. That would be interesting to study, your brain.”
As if she hadn't heard him, Bonnie said, “Your victims would love to judge and punish you. They're just looking for a door so they can come back.”
“Door?” MacBride was frowning, plainly uneasy.
“Between our world and theirs. Victims of murder are unhappy souls, and angry. They stay in limbo for a long time, unable to move on.”
“Dead is dead.” He didn't sound nearly as sure as he obviously wanted to. “I know. I've watched death again and again. It's just like flipping a switch. Alive—then dead. There's nothing after. Nothing.”
Bonnie turned her head and looked up at him with an oddly serene smile. “Nothing? Then how did we know where to find Steve? You thought it was Liz, reading tea leaves. But it wasn't. It was me. And Steve. Poor dead Steve.”
MacBride's throat moved convulsively.
“Shall I open the door again, Mayor? Shall I let poor dead Steve and all your other victims back in?”
Don't frighten him,Miranda thought again. Mac-Bride was like a cornered animal when he was frightened….
“Ghosts can't hurt me,” MacBride scoffed, only a faint quiver betraying his apprehension.
“Are you sure about that, John?” Miranda asked, trying to draw his attention away from Bonnie. “Are you really sure?”
“Sure enough.” But a white line of tension showed around his lips, and his eyes were still moving restlessly as though searching the profuse vegetation all around them for something threatening.
“They want back in,” Bonnie said softly. “They want to … talk to you, Mayor.”
“There's nothing after death.” The gun in his hand moved until it was pointed at Bonnie. “Nothing. No heaven. No hell. No ghosts.” His voice was suddenly toneless, and dawning in his face was the look of a man confronting a nightmare he hadn't dared to imagine.
Miranda could almost hear the screams of his victims, and knew that John MacBride heard them. She saw his finger tightening on the trigger, and understood in a moment of utter clarity that he would kill Bonnie because he dared not leave her alive.
Bonnie could talk to the dead. And John MacBride couldn't bear to hear what the dead would say to him.
Miranda knew she had to act, and now. But she also knew that the extra pistol she had stuck into the waistband of her jeans at the small of her back was too many long seconds away from her hand because of her heavy jacket.
She also knew there was no choice.
She went for her gun.
Seeing or sensing a threat more immediate than Bonnie, MacBride moved with lightning speed, his gun jerking around to point at Miranda. He fired, and in the same instant Bishop was there in front of her, throwing his body between her and that lethal bullet. As her fingers closed over her own gun, she heard the shot, heard the sickening wet thud as the bullet struck Bishop. Everything in her cried out in desperate, violent protest, but it was too late. With dreadful suddenness, their connection was severed, his hot agony washing over her and through her, and Miranda could barely see as she drew her gun and leveled it at MacBride.
And it was her vision. Bishop lay on the ground, momentarily out of her sight. Bonnie tied up and helpless, the gun aimed at Miranda, a shot echoing—and the agony of death.
But not hers.
She fired three times, hitting MacBride dead center in his chest, and even as he fell she was dropping her own gun and kneeling at Bishop's side.
Terrified by the deathly pallor of his face, she stared at his once white T-shirt, horribly marked by a spreading scarlet stain. She fumbled with the shirt, pulling it up so that she could see how bad it was. The wound was a small, round hole in Bishop's chest, neat, hardly bleeding now.
It looked so innocent. So minor. But Miranda knew all too well the irreparable damage a bullet did to the human body. The ripped muscle and shattered bone, the internal organs torn beyond repair …
She pressed both hands over the wound, bearing down, trying with all her might and will to hold life in his body. He couldn't leave her. He couldn't.
“Randy, you have to untie me,” Bonnie said.
“I have to stop the bleeding,” Miranda said, vaguely surprised that she sounded so calm.
“That won't help him now.” Bonnie's voice was very thin and very steady. “Look at where the wound is, Randy. His heart's already stopped.”
“No.”
“Randy—”
“No!”
“Listen to me. You have to untie me. Now, before it's too late.”
Miranda was trying to listen for another voice. “Noah?” She touched his cheek with bloody fingers. “Noah, please …” She looked at her sister with blind eyes. “I can't feel him anymore, Bonnie.”
“I can.”
Miranda blinked, saw her sister clearly. “You can feel him? Then—”
“It's not too late. You have to come untie me, Randy. Hurry.”
“I don't want to leave him,” Miranda whispered. But even as she said it she was crawling across the damp, sour mulch to Bonnie, finally understanding her sister's urgency. She worked on the ropes, the task made more difficult by the bits of dirt and bark sticking to the blood that coated her fingers.
“Hurry, Randy. There isn't much time left.”
“You can't,” Miranda protested.
“Yes, I can.”
Fiercely, Miranda said, “Do you think I could bear it if I lost both of you?”
“You won't lose either of us,” Bonnie promised, her voice holding steady.
The knots finally gave way, and Miranda was still protesting as they hurried back to Bishop's sprawled, motionless body.
“You'll have to go too deep, give too much of yourself—”
“You can pull me free before it's too late.” Kneeling on one side of Bishop, Bonnie looked across at her with absolute trust. “But not until he's back. Promise me.”
“Bonnie—”
“Promise me, Randy. You know what could happen if you pull me free too soon.”
Miranda closed her eyes briefly, desperately aware of critical seconds ticking away. “All right. Just do it, Bonnie.”
Bonnie leaned forward over Bishop's body and placed both hands over the wound in his chest. She drew a deep breath and closed her eyes, and Miranda saw her shudder, saw the color seep from her face as she poured everything, all her strength and will and her vital life force, into the ef
fort to heal a mortal injury.
Miranda put her hand against Bishop's cold cheek and prayed silently to a God she had never believed in.
TWENTY-ONE
When Alex and Tony burst into the greenhouse, the brilliant fluorescent light over the onetime work area provided more than enough illumination to see clearly. The body of John MacBride lay sprawled on a mound of rotting mulch, his bloodied shirt and open, staring eyes mute testament to the sudden violence of his death.
A few feet away, Miranda sat with Bonnie's head in her lap, gently stroking her sister's hair with one hand. Behind her, his arms wrapped around her and his scarred cheek pressed to her temple, was Bishop. He was almost rocking her in an oddly intimate, comforting embrace.
Tony felt a bit embarrassed looking at them, which surprised him somewhat. He felt like an intruder.
Miranda looked up at them calmly. “What took you so long?”
“We were miles away.” Tony hunkered down to check MacBride's carotid pulse just to make sure. “But that's a hell of a transmitter you've got there, lady. Even at that distance, it jerked me up out of my chair when you called.”
“Did I call?” she asked vaguely.
Tony tapped his temple with two fingers as he straightened.
She grimaced. “Sorry. I wasn't even aware of doing it.”
“Yeah, that's what makes it remarkable,” Tony said dryly.
Alex said, “Hell, even I heard it. Jesus, Randy.”
Miranda wondered if she was, even now, broadcasting like a beacon, but didn't worry too much about it. She was so tired she doubted she had enough psychic energy left to disturb anybody, at least for the moment.
“Is she all right?” Tony asked, staring down at Bonnie's relaxed face.
“She will be. But we should get her off the cold ground, I think.”
Tony gazed at her steadily. “So it's over?”
“Just about,” Miranda said.
Bishop stirred for the first time, easing away from Miranda and climbing to his feet, and it was only then that the two other men saw his bloody shirt.
Tony eyed him for a few seconds, then said, “Cut yourself shaving?”
Alex was open-mouthed with astonishment. “For Christ's sake. Liz got it right. I swear I forgot all about it, but even the white shirt—” He grunted suddenly and looked oddly amused. “It wasn't symbolic at all. It was literal.”