Blood Ties

CHAPTER 17

HOLLIS LOOKED BACK and forth between them. “You mean—Andrea is your mother?”

“Andrea wasn’t her name.” Diana’s voice, weirdly hollow in the gray time, sounded numb.

“It was my middle name, the name I went by for most of my life. Until I married. Your father preferred my first name, so I used that.”

Diana shook her head slowly. “Missy said…you were okay. That you were at peace. Did she lie to me?”

“No, your sister didn’t lie. I was at peace. Until… they came for me.”

“Who?”

“His victims.”

“Wait,” Hollis said. “You got yanked out of heaven?”

“It was my choice. I could have said no. But they were insistent. All of them, all the victims. His victims, calling me to help them. Poor souls who couldn’t move on until he was made to pay for what he’d done.”

“Samuel?”

“No.” Andrea’s eyes were filled with sorrow. “Your father. Without him, without his money and determination to destroy Bishop, so much of this wouldn’t have happened. He believed he could regain control over your life, get you back, if he destroyed the SCU. But even more than that, he hated Bishop. Hated him for allowing you to believe in your gifts, for providing you with a useful life with purpose. Something he could never do.”

“Oh, my God,” Diana said.

“The truth underneath it all,” Hollis said, almost as stunned as her friend was.

Andrea said, “I tried to help, but… I’d been away so long it was difficult for me, just to make myself seen. I was never able to get here, to the gray time, when you were walking here, and it was even harder to make myself seen on the living side. Until Hollis.”

“You could have told me who you were,” Hollis said. “That might have helped, you know.”

“I’m sorry. I was… confused. The bits of knowledge I had when I came back were jumbled. It’s taken me a while to sort everything out.”

Diana was struggling visibly to come to grips with what she had heard. “But… Dad… He helped Samuel? He helped that monster destroy so many innocent people?”

“You were all he had left. When you tried to break away from him, when you met Quentin and Bishop, he knew he was losing you. He was willing to do anything to stop that. Anything.”

Hollis, quite abruptly, felt a tug, and said, “Diana, I think Reese wants to pull me back. We have to leave. Now.” She took a quick look around the corner of the building and added urgently, “Samuel’s heading back this way. If we’re going to leave without him seeing us, it has to be now.”

“There’s no time,” Brooke said to Andrea.

Andrea reached out and caught Diana’s hand, holding it for only an instant. “You’ll remember,” she said. “When you wake up, you’ll remember all of it. Have a happy, useful life, Diana. Fight for it. In spite of your father.”

“But—wait. No, I want to—”

But Andrea was gone, vanished like a soap bubble.

“There’s no time,” Brooke repeated.

Hollis made sure she had a firm grip on Diana’s arm. “You’ve found your truths,” she said quickly. “Come back with me now, Diana. Come back to Quentin. Reach with me. Do it.”

Diana looked at her blindly for a heartbeat or two, still obviously stunned, then nodded. “Quentin. I’ll reach for Quentin.”

Hollis felt a wave of stark relief sweep over her, even as the tugging became stronger. Too strong to resist. She felt herself begin to let go of this place or time or whatever it was and return to her own reality, and in the last seconds as the gray time began to flicker and then fade, she looked at Brooke, maybe to say goodbye.

The guide was smiling. And there was an odd, flat shine in her eyes.

Diana sucked in a breath and opened her eyes, immediately aware of her living, breathing—and very, very sore—body. She saw an unfamiliar ceiling, heard the beeps and clicks of machinery, and realized that she was in the hospital. She felt something leave her forehead and saw that it was Hollis’s hand, so she automatically looked to her left.

Hollis was slumped, mostly supported by Reese, but she was very much awake. Pale and with shadows of exhaustion beneath her eyes, but still on her feet. More or less. And grinning. “Hey. Hey, there. We did it.”

“You did it,” Diana murmured, her voice as scratchy as her throat was. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it. My pleasure. Let’s not do it again, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Diana…”

She looked to her right to see Quentin, feeling something inside her turn over with a painful lurch: He was haggard and hollow-eyed, and it hurt her to see him like that. It hurt her and moved her unbearably to see that he was, still, afraid to hope she was really back.

He was holding her hand against his cheek, and she managed to move her fingers against his skin.

Scratchy voice and all, she said, “I love you.”

His eyes lit up with a warmth she knew she could wrap herself in to truly begin her happy life. “I love you. So much.”

Hollis stopped grinning long enough to look up at DeMarco. “You think maybe we should leave?”

“That would probably be a good idea.”

Diana tore her eyes away from Quentin long enough to say to Hollis, “You have to tell them. In Serenade. So they know what they’re really up against.”

“Oh, yeah. Right. Only—listen, you are okay?”

“I’m fine. Tired and sore, but I think the doctors will be surprised when they check under these bandages. Very surprised.”

“In that case,” Hollis said to Reese, “we need to get to Serenade. Because it’s worse than you know, and they’ll need your primal ability to sense a threat and maybe my shiny new ability to heal, and—”

“Yeah, I’ve got all that,” he said, calm. “You’re broadcasting.”

“Am I? Sorry.”

“It’s a time-saver.” He looked at Quentin, his brows lifting. “I don’t think there’s anything else for us to do here, and they’ll definitely need us in Serenade. I’m assuming Diana will fill you in.”

“I will,” she said.

DeMarco nodded. “And we’ll tell the others you’re okay. Quentin, you should probably stick close, just in case. I don’t think there’s a threat here, but until we get things cleared up in Serenade…”

“Don’t worry, I’m not planning to leave her side for the next fifty or sixty years.”

To Diana, Hollis said, “Yours is more romantic than mine. That might be a problem.”

Diana tried hard not to smile as she looked at DeMarco. “She’s … really tired right now.”

“I know. She’ll hate herself later. Assuming she remembers. You two watch your backs. Come on, sweetie, let’s go.”

“Sweetie? You’re being sarcastic, aren’t you?”

“A little bit.”

“Well, I’m not sure I like sarcasm from my—from mine. You might have to fix that.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I mean fix it now, not keep doing it….”

As DeMarco took her away and Hollis’s rather plaintive voice faded with distance, Diana looked at Quentin and said, “I’m glad he enjoys her.”

“Yeah. Reese has a wicked sense of humor; it just doesn’t show very often. I think they’ll be very good for each other.”

“Like you’ve been good for me.”

“I was beginning to wonder,” he said.

“I know. For a long time it seemed like there was nothing in my life, and then there was so much I couldn’t trust it all…. I’m sorry,

Quentin.”

“Don’t be sorry. Some things have to happen just the way they happen, remember? I’d never want to go through the last thirty hours again, but the last year, getting to know you and watching you…bloom right in front of me? I wouldn’t take anything for that.”

“I’m glad. And as soon as I get out of this hospital bed, I’ll show you just how much.”

“Promises, promises.” He saw her fumble with her other hand for the bed’s controls and begin to raise the head slowly, and he said, “Hey, are you sure you want to do that?”

“It’s okay. I’m just a little… stiff. But I won’t face him lying down.”

“Face who?”

“My father.” She stopped raising the bed when she was half sitting up, then took a deep breath and shifted a bit. “Ouch. Quentin, I want you to hear this, okay? Hear it and believe me when I tell you that he is never going to interfere in our lives again. And I’m more than okay with that.”

“Diana—”

She turned her head and said, “Dad, you can come out now.”

Surprised, Quentin saw Elliot Brisco come around the curtain, apparently from the far corner of the room. His instinct was to rise and greet the man, despite the tension that had existed between them since their first meeting nearly a year before, but what he could feel in Diana kept him still and silent.

“What are you doing here, Dad?”

“I came to see you, of course. As soon as I heard about… the accident.” His face was pale, and there was an odd stiffness about him, like something brittle in danger of shattering.

“The accident? That’s the way you prefer to think about the fact that a sniper shot your daughter in broad daylight on a public street?”

He started to reach a hand out to her, but something in her face, something hard and closed, stopped him. “It—was a terrible thing. Horrible. I’m so sorry that happened to you, Diana.”

“I’m assuming you didn’t know he was going to shoot me.”

His face went even whiter. “Christ, Diana, I swear to you that’s the last thing in this world I would have wanted.”

She wasn’t particularly moved by his obvious anguish. “Yeah, well, the thing is, if you’d understood anything at all about my abilities, if you had just kept an open mind and tried to believe what I was telling you was real and not some disease you could cure by throwing money at it, you would have known. You would have known the instant Samuel was killed that he’d have to come after me.”

“Do you know how insane that sounds?” His voice was harsh.

“Even now you can’t admit it. He had me shot because he needed my abilities, Dad. He needed what I could do to get out of the place you’d probably call limbo—if you believed in anything not of this world, that is. But you don’t. Even now you don’t.”

“Diana—”

“So much of this was your fault. Because you couldn’t bear to give up control over my life, you destroyed so many other lives. Innocent lives. Destroyed them, Dad. Snuffed them out like candles.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“I know exactly what I’m saying. You’ve been trying to control events since I met Quentin. The same way you always try to control events. Only this time it wasn’t business deals or doctors, or just keeping your daughter too medicated to live a normal life. This time it was twisted people with evil agendas of their own. You thought you could control them and use them to destroy the SCU, destroy Bishop.”

He hardly seemed to be breathing as he stared at her.

“I wonder what it cost you to hire enough private investigators or pay off enough cops or feds to find the information you wanted—a name. The name of someone who hated Bishop as much as you did and was willing to go to any lengths to destroy him. Whatever it cost, you got that name. Samuel. Adam Deacon Samuel. A man who already had the SCU in his sights, had already begun to test them and test their defenses. You didn’t much care about the rest, did you? Didn’t care how sick and twisted he was. Didn’t care about the victims of his evil, their bodies piling up like cordwood. Didn’t care about the people in his so-called church, the children he was damaging and killing. And of course you didn’t believe he had any kind of paranormal ability. All you knew, all you needed to know, was that he wanted to destroy the SCU. So you helped him.”

“I made a donation to a church,” he said finally, his voice more hoarse than before.

“You made a donation to a monster.” She shook her head slightly, her eyes never leaving his. “You’ll pay for what you did. I don’t know what Bishop means to do with the evidence he has and will have, but whatever it is, I’ll help him.”

“Diana—”

“I’ll help him. But whatever he does or doesn’t do, you’re no longer a part of my life. No longer my father. As far as I’m concerned, you’re as evil as Samuel was. And the world should be rid of you both.”

Serenade

“Told you we wouldn’t get a good night’s sleep,” Tony said to Jaylene, yawning, as they relieved two other agents in the command center shortly after six A.M.

“Hey, I got plenty,” she said, sitting down at a console and logging in to the computer. “But then, I went to bed when we got back to the B&B. How long did you stay down in the dining room talking?”

“You make it sound social,” Tony complained, logging in at a second work console. “A bunch of us were working things through. Trying to get a handle on the situation. Weren’t making much headway until Dean came off duty at midnight and joined us for coffee.”

“Coffee at midnight. Yeah, that’ll help you sleep.”

Tony ignored that. “Plus, that’s around the time Reese and Hollis got back. With the great news about Diana being okay. And with more pieces of the puzzle.”

“Confirmation,” Jaylene said. “We’d already figured out this had Samuel’s name written all over it. Or, at least, Miranda had.”

“True enough. Nice to have it confirmed, though. And am I the only one who finds it totally creepy that this bastard is still after us from his grave?”

“No.”

Tony sighed. “Anyway, when Dean came off duty, he said he’d been pulling up everything he could find on Taryn Holder, looking for a connection to somebody here in town.”

“And not finding one, I take it.”

“No, but at least he made a solid start. Now we keep looking.”

About to start work, Jaylene paused to say, “You know, it hit me last night that we haven’t even talked about that poor reporter.”

“I hate to be blunt about it, but what’s to say? She was warned, they all were.”

“Yeah, I know that. And being equally blunt, that’s not what I was thinking about. The sniper could have just as easily shot Miranda. So why didn’t he? Why choose the reporter?”

“To shake up all the noncombatants around here, maybe.” Tony shrugged. “That’s what I’d do.”

Jaylene stared at him.

“Oh, come on, I mean thinking from the bad guy’s point of view. That is what profiling is all about, remember?”

“Yeah, yeah. My point, however, is that maybe Miranda was also right in suggesting that at least some of this could have been designed to draw Bishop out. Offering stark proof that he could have taken Miranda out might be expected to do that.”

“So would taking her out,” Tony countered.

“That’s what a typical enemy might think. But what if the enemy is psychic, Tony? Psychic enough to know that all he’d gain by taking Miranda out would be Bishop paralyzed at best—and dead somewhere far away at worst?”

Tony shook his head slowly. “There aren’t half a dozen people outside the SCU who know that the connection between Bishop and Miranda makes them that vulnerable.”

“But they are that vulnerable. Kill one, and you’ll very likely kill the other as well, or at the very least incapacitate him or her. Because they’re connected, and on a level deeper than any we’ve ever found, even between blood siblings. What if the sniper knows that? Because he’s psychic himself, or because Samuel was. And if he knows, what if killing Bishop long distance—as it were—isn’t good enough?”

“Then… you’re right. Taking out the reporter when she was two feet away from Miranda might be expected to bring Bishop here, and in a hurry. Makes sense. Bishop, more than any of the rest of us, is the one Samuel was always after. And the setup here sure as hell has all the earmarks of a trap.”

“Which is another indication that the sniper could be local, or at least somehow connected to this place. He’s moving around too freely for it to be otherwise. He knows this place like the back of his hand.”

After a moment, Tony said, “Tell you what. Why don’t you keep digging into Taryn Holder’s background?”

“While you do what?”

“While I start checking into the backgrounds of all the Pageant County deputies.”

“You seriously think it’s a cop?”

“I think that sniper has some serious military training, and if this is home, the only job he might feel comfortable in would be one where he carries a gun.”

“It’s a leap,” Jaylene said after a pause.

“Not a big one. There’s been so much confusion since the bomb, even before, that a deputy who knew the terrain could have slipped away long enough to play sniper. And we should rule it out. Hell, we should have ruled it out after the sniper took his first shots.”

“True enough. Okay. Let’s dig.”

Gabriel Wolf studied the old farmhouse, adjusting the binoculars until he had a crystal-clear view. There was no movement, no sign of life.

Maybe he’s playing possum, Roxanne suggested.

“Why would he be?” Gabriel kept his voice low. “You kept watch all night, and if Bishop knows what he’s talking about, this guy won’t pick up on either of us psychically.”

Doesn’t mean he doesn’t know about us.

“Oh, I’m betting he knows about us. I’m betting he spotted us. Bastard has the advantage of knowing this place, and well.”

Don’t be so disgruntled about it. We couldn’t have known.

“Yeah, yeah.” Gabriel frowned as the binoculars finally picked up a bit of movement in what he judged to be the kitchen windows. “Hold on. Looks like he’s finally up.”

About time.

Gabriel watched intently and was rewarded a little more than ten minutes later: A tall, dark man somewhere in his late forties, with a distinctly military bearing despite his casual jeans and a sweatshirt, came out of the house. The rifle Gabriel knew he carried today was concealed in an oversize duffel bag. The man appeared to feel safe, showing no signs of unease or worry as he crossed the small yard and briskly made his way down the long, fence-bordered drive toward the main road. And town.

“Man, I want to take him out,” Gabriel muttered.

Not the plan. We have nothing on the other one, you know that. We have to draw him out.

“Yeah. But I don’t have to like it.” Gabriel touched the almost invisible com device in his ear. “Hey. He’s on the move.”

“Got him,” a voice whispered back. “Our information says the one in the house should give you no trouble. But watch yourself.”

“Copy that.” He touched the com again, continued to watch the sniper until he was well away from the house, and then left his own place of concealment to begin moving cautiously toward it.

It was just after eight A.M. when Dean Ramsey joined Tony and Jaylene in the command center. He was bearing hot coffee and news. “Check your emails,” he advised them. “Word from Bishop.”

Tony groaned. “My eyes are already starting to cross from looking at this screen the last couple of hours.”

“Find anything?”

“I dunno. Maybe.” Tony blew absently on the hot coffee to cool it, staring at the screen. “There’s military training here, just not the kind we’re looking for. At least—”

Jaylene swore under her breath. She turned her head to stare at Tony. “Check your email. Looks like you were right, Tony. The sniper’s connected to this town, all right.”

Dean said, “And that’s not all he’s connected to.”

Tony checked his email, opened the file from Bishop, and began to read. Only a couple of paragraphs in, he was swearing as well, and not under his breath. “Jesus. I don’t believe it. How did we not know—”

“Because Galen didn’t know,” Dean interrupted. “The connection went back too far. Finish reading. And then you guys put your corns in. We’re moving outside in just a few minutes.”

The key was under the flowerpot, as promised. Gabriel unlocked the door and slipped into the old farmhouse, moving with utter silence.

Not as much fun for me, Roxanne noted. A key, for crying out loud.

With hardly a breath of sound, Gabriel said, “Keep watch, Rox. Just because he’s not supposed to be any trouble doesn’t mean he won’t be.”

Okay, okay. Lemme see…. He’s in the basement. Door’s in the kitchen, Gabe.

Gabriel made his way to the kitchen, still moving without a sound, gun drawn and ready. He found the basement door easily enough, his brows lifting as he noted the bolt locking it from this side.

Keeping something in rather than out, don’t you think? Because there’s no other exit from the basement. Bishop was right. They must believe the leash has been slipping. Be careful, Gabe.

He unlocked the bolt carefully, then just as carefully eased the door open. As soon as he did, he heard a sound coming from the basement.

Humming.

And a cheery tune, no less. Jesus.

Without responding out loud, Gabriel moved slowly and cautiously down the well-lit stairs and into a very bright basement. There was lots of white tile and stainless steel, and large lights illuminated the space more brightly than daylight.

There were two stainless-steel tables. On one lay a clear-plastic-wrapped body that barely appeared to be human.

The other table was covered with thickly coagulated blood, which was in the process of being washed off and down the big drain in the floor. The man wielding the hose looked very much like the man who had left the house only minutes before, except that he was perhaps a few years younger and there was nothing military in his bearing.

At all.

And there was a definite light of madness in his eyes when he turned his head, saw Gabriel, and smiled.

“Hello. BJ said I could clean up this time. He was too tired last night. Did Bubba send you?”

“Yeah,” Gabriel said, holding his voice even with an effort. “Bubba sent me. We need to go to town, Rex.”

Ruby crept into Bailey’s bedroom early, to double-check, and was satisfied to find one of her guardians still sleeping. Just to make sure, she put her hand on Bailey’s shoulder and concentrated for several long moments before stepping away from the bed.

Without much effort at all, she made the bed shimmer and then seemingly transform. Where before there had been tumbled covers and a dark-haired woman sleeping, now there was only a neatly made bed. Good. Bailey would be safe here. Until it was all over.

She went downstairs, finding Galen pouring coffee in the kitchen.

“You’re up early,” he commented.

“I didn’t sleep very well,” Ruby confessed. She got cereal for herself from the pantry, then milk from the fridge and a bowl and spoon. “Are you going to rest when Bailey gets up?”

“Probably.” he said, joining her at the kitchen table.

She fixed her cereal, took several bites, then said, “You haven’t tried to listen to the voices, have you?”

“As a matter of fact, I did,” he told her. “Still nothing I can understand. Voices, but not really words.”

“I expect they don’t want you to hear them now.”

He frowned. “Ruby, do you know where the voices are coming from?”

“They were let in when Father died,” she told him, her voice matter-of-fact. “Before that, they just listened.”

“Listened? To who?”

“To you. To your friends. The team. Father needed a spy. He was pleased when he found them. Because even though they knew about you, you didn’t know about them.”

Galen began to feel very, very cold. “Ruby, what’re you talking about?”

“Your brothers.”

“I don’t have any brothers.”

She looked at him with those too-old eyes. “No, you never knew about them. Your mother never told you the good man who raised you wasn’t your father. She made sure nobody knew about him. Changed her name, moved far away from here. Because your biological father was… really mean. He hurt your mother, and your brothers. He would have hurt you if he’d known about you. But your mother kept you secret. Until she was able to run away. She couldn’t take your brothers. They were already… wrong. Twisted. Because of him. She knew. She wanted to save you. So she ran away.”

“Ruby—”

“I would have told you sooner, but… I didn’t know until just after I got here. And even then, it was sort of fuzzy. There were so many chess pieces on the board, you know?”

The coldness Galen felt went all the way to his marrow. He stared at her sweet, innocent face with its too-old eyes and knew without a shadow of a doubt that she was telling him the truth. He had brothers. And, more important to him, they had been inside his head, maybe for a long time, spying on him. And on the unit.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Ruby told him. “Bishop knows that. The rest will too. Father was awfully powerful. He could do things most people can’t even imagine. And he planned ahead.”

His training kicked in automatically, and he said, “If they’re in me, then they know about you. I have to get you out of here.”

Sadly, Ruby said, “I’m sorry. Please don’t blame yourself, okay? That’s not the way it’s supposed to end.”

“The little freak’s right.”

Galen tried, but he was barely able to rise from his chair, barely caught a glimpse of the tall man standing in the doorway, before he heard the muffled sneezes of a silenced automatic and felt bullets slamming into his chest.