Chill Of Fear

CHAPTER 2

Madison Sims was what her mother termed "an imaginative child," a definition Madison herself understood perfectly. It meant that her mother and other grownups didn't believe her when she told them that her so-called imaginary friends were actually real — if not flesh and blood.

Madison was a very bright eight-year-old and had caught on quickly to the fact that saying things like that made people uncomfortable. And her uncomfortable, since it led to conversations between her parents in hushed voices, and visits to doctors, and wary looks from other grownups.

So she had stopped talking about her friends, and when her mother oh-so-casually asked about them, had lied without a blink. Did she still see children dressed as if they had stepped out of an old movie, children who seemingly walked through walls and whose laughter and voices only she could hear?

Nope. Nuh-uh. Not Madison.

Mama wouldn't be mad at her if she told the truth, she knew that, didn't she?

She knew it. But Madison had discovered even in her young life that there was truth... and then there was truth. And she had learned that some truths were better kept to herself.

Besides, she didn't always see the other children. Never at home, in their almost-new house near the ocean. And seldom at the homes of other family or her "real" friends. Just, mostly, at places like The Lodge, old places.

She liked The Lodge, even though there was a sad feeling to some of the rooms and parts of the grounds. She loved the gardens, where, she had discovered the previous day, it was possible to walk for hours with her little Yorkie, Angelo, and not be scolded by the gardeners for trampling the flowers.

Where the other children liked to play.

It was still very early when she was allowed to excuse herself from the breakfast table and left her parents to finish their meal on the veranda while she and Angelo went off to explore the gardens they hadn't got to the previous day.

"Don't go outside the fence, Madison," her mother warned.

"I won't, Mama. Come on, Angelo."

The Lodge provided a little postcard map of the gardens, and Madison consulted that as she and her attentive companion paused just out of sight of the veranda. Rose Garden, she'd seen that yesterday after they'd arrived here. And the greenhouse. She'd also seen the Rock Garden the previous day. But she hadn't seen the Zen Garden, and that certainly sounded like something worth seeing.

She glanced back toward The Lodge, her gaze traveling up to the observation tower she had also seen the day before. Her eyesight was very good, and she could make out a man and woman standing up there, looking down at her.

"This way, Madison."

She looked back toward the gardens to see a smiling little girl beckoning. Feeling suddenly happy, Madison waved gaily to the couple up in the tower and then followed this new friend toward the path leading off into the Zen Garden.

"Is she yours?" Diana asked as the little girl waved up at them and then raced off with her dog toward one of the garden paths.

"No, I've never seen her before." Quentin frowned slightly, adding, "Haven't seen any other kids here, in fact, since I got here yesterday. I hope someone's keeping an eye on her. This isn't the safest place for children."

"Isn't it? Why?"

He returned his attention to Diana and smiled, neither of which was difficult. "Oh... streams and ponds, horses, snakes from the mountains. That sort of thing."

It was her turn to frown just a little, those very green eyes of hers direct and thoughtful. "I get the feeling that's not really what you meant, though."

Quentin was hardly in the habit of confiding in strangers, so he was surprised by his impulse to confide in this one. He was unusually drawn to her. There was something about Diana Brisco, something in those green eyes or the vulnerable curve of her mouth.

She was striking rather than pretty, with the coppery hair and very fair skin of a true redhead, paired with those unusual green eyes. Her features otherwise were ordinary, though her face held the sharpened look of someone under stress of some kind. And though the fashion magazines would have called her slender, Quentin thought she was too thin by a good ten or fifteen pounds.

She wasn't his type at all, yet from the instant he had heard her voice and turned his head to see her come into the tower, he had been conscious of the strangest feeling. It was why he had offered to shake hands with her, though that was far more a business or professional gesture than one between strangers meeting casually at a resort.

He had needed to touch her, almost as if something inside him sought reassurance that she was real, that she was here. Finally, she was here.

Peculiar, to say the least.

And now, standing no more than a couple of feet away from her, he was highly conscious of the warm scents of soap and some kind of herbal shampoo. Aware of the gold flecks in her green eyes, and even of her quiet breathing. Hell, he could almost hear her heart beating.

He told himself to turn off the spider sense, but of course that was impossible: whenever he was focused or concentrating, that "extra" sense kicked in, and all his other senses became almost painfully heightened. That was, of course, all it was. He just didn't know why he was so focused on her, so intent.

"I guess it's none of my business," she murmured.

The silence had definitely gone on too long.

"I don't know that it's my business," he told her ruefully. "But I tend to visit The Lodge once every year or so, and over time I've... become interested in its history. It's an old place, so there's plenty of history and quite a few tragedies, some of them involving children."

Diana glanced back out and down toward where the little girl had disappeared, then returned her gaze to Quentin. "I see. I didn't know that. But then, this is my first visit here. I haven't had a chance to look into the history of the place."

"I'm here on vacation," he said, not even completely sure why he wanted to steer the conversation away from The Lodge's potential danger to children when he had, after all, brought up the subject himself. "How about you?"

She took a sip of her coffee, her hesitation almost imperceptible. Almost.

"I'm attending a workshop here for the next few weeks. A rather famous artist is teaching it. Painting."

"So you're an artist?"

"Actually, no. It's more of a... therapeutic workshop." She paused again, and added in a slightly flattened, let's-get-this-over-with tone, "My doctor recommended it."

Accustomed to reading between the lines as well as weighing people, Quentin decided that the doctor was undoubtedly a psychiatrist or psychologist. But, possibly unlike other people Diana had encountered before, Quentin had absolutely no bias against or discomfort with mental or emotional issues or the people who treated them. In fact, he understood far better than most just how fragile and troubled the human mind could be.

Especially a psychic's mind.

And most especially one who might not know that's what she was.

He was intrigued and more than a little cautious, not quite sure how he should handle a situation he'd never before encountered. At the same time, he was conscious of something he'd felt once or twice before in his life, a certainty of being in the right place at the right time, and that compelled him to follow his instincts.

Rather than just politely accept what she said or shy away from the subject uppermost in her mind, Quentin confronted it directly.

Matter-of-factly, he said, "Our company shrink insists we take vacation time every year whether we want to or not. Plus, of course, we get the inkblots and regular appointments to sit down and talk about anything that might be bothering us."

"I guess mental and emotional health are issues a lot of companies are more aware of these days," she said after a moment.

"Especially some companies," he agreed. "In my case, it's definitely the wear and tear and just general stress of the job. I'm with the FBI."

"I never would have guessed. I mean—"

He chuckled. "I know I don't look the part, according to what's portrayed on TV and in the movies, but such is fate. The unit I belong to is a little less formal than the traditional FBI mold. Even on the clock, we seldom wear suits and ties. But we're still cops, and the cases we investigate tend to be the worst of the lot. Which is why doctors and various forms of therapy are used to help us to work more effectively."

Diana looked down at her coffee cup and, rather abruptly, said, "So it does help you? Therapy?"

"I hope so. None of us has had to take medical leave for emotional or psychological reasons despite several years of dealing with some pretty rough cases involving murderers, rapists, and kidnappers. So something must be working."

Her mouth twisted, and she murmured, seemingly to herself more than to him, "And I can't even deal with everyday life."

"You seem to be dealing just fine," he told her.

"Oh, I can concentrate pretty well for twenty minutes or half an hour at a stretch. Hold a conversation that actually makes sense. Usually. But then..."

"Then, what? What happens, Diana?"

She wavered visibly, then shook her head with a polite, strangers-on-an-elevator smile. "Never mind. You're on vacation and I'm here for one more round of self-examination. Maybe this one will do the trick. Thanks for sharing your coffee, though. It-was nice meeting you, Quentin."

He wanted to stop her as she turned to set her coffee cup back on the tray, but something told him it would be better to let her go. For now.

"Nice meeting you, Diana. See you around."

"Sure." Her tone was still polite, like the distant smile she wore as she left the observation tower.

Quentin looked after her for a long time, then turned his gaze to the morning view.

Bishop had told him once that during the early days of locating and recruiting psychics for the unit, he had found a number of psychically gifted but emotionally fragile people who could never have withstood the demands of police work. Some had barely coped with their abilities just living day to day, while others...

Others, Bishop said, had been convinced somewhere in their lives, by doctors or their own seemingly bizarre experiences, that they were mentally ill.

Because, obviously, there was no other explanation for the voices they heard in their heads, or the strangely vivid dreams they experienced, or the blackouts or headaches that plagued them. No other reason to explain why they weren't "normal" like everybody else.

Conventional medicine was fairly universal in treating such "symptoms" with medication and various other therapies, none of which involved convincing the patient that he or she was, in fact, perfectly normal, and simply possessed an extra sense or two that most other people didn't share.

So they ended up thinking they were crazy, and since their "problem" was an organic thing perfectly natural to them, the treatments and therapies attempting to fix what had never been broken failed them abysmally. And most of them went through life, if they survived at all, so emotionally and psychologically damaged that they never found peace, let alone joy.

Unless they happened to encounter a doctor able to think outside the traditional medical box. Or another psychic with the awareness and willingness to help them.

Diana Brisco, Quentin was certain, was a psychic. He wasn't sure what ability she possessed; though he could usually recognize another psychic, his own ability allowed him only to look forward — not into another's mind or emotions. He was also unsure how strong her ability or abilities were.

Strong enough that she was here undergoing "one more round of self-examination" in an attempt to heal herself. Strong enough that she had likely been medicated at various points in her life. Strong enough that now, in her late twenties or early thirties, she wore the finely honed look of someone for whom stress was a constant companion.

Yet she was also strong enough to have survived this long, sane and able to function even believing something inside her was wrong, and that said a lot about her character.

So she was strong, strong enough to handle her abilities if she only knew how to do that. And she was here. Fate had brought her here, now. Brought her to The Lodge, this particular place, at this particular time.

Even more, she had come up to the observation tower at the crack of dawn, her own muttered words an indication that she hadn't even been sure why she was climbing the stairs rather than seeking out a far more likely place to find coffee.

"Gotta be a reason," Quentin heard himself murmur. "There are no coincidences. And some things have to happen just the way they happen."

It wasn't what he'd come here to do, help a troubled psychic. But Quentin, though not a complete fatalist, had been convinced for some time that certain encounters and events in one's life were mapped out in advance, predetermined and virtually set in stone.

Crossroads, intersections where key decisions or choices had to be made.

And he thought this might be one of them, for him. What he did or didn't do now could determine his path from this point onward, perhaps even his ultimate fate.

"The universe puts you where you need to be," he reminded himself, repeating something Bishop and his wife, Miranda, often told their team of investigators. "Take advantage of it."

The question was... how?

Ellie Weeks knew she was going to get fired. She knew it. And the reasons why she would get fired made up a long list, at the top of which was the secret, passionate affair she'd had with one of the guests a few weeks back.

Number two on the list was getting pregnant.

There had been a cold knot of terror in her belly ever since she'd used the early pregnancy test that morning — for the third time this week. Positive. All positive.

Three faulty tests in a row were hardly likely, she knew that all too well. So they hadn't been faulty. And she could no longer ignore or pretend to ignore the awful truth.

She was unmarried, going to have a baby, and the father of her child was — he had told her, by way of ending their affair — already married. Happily.

Happily married. Christ.

Men were bastards, every last one of them. Her father had been a bastard, and every man she'd been involved with in her twenty-seven years had been a bastard.

"You're just not lucky with men," her friend and fellow maid at The Lodge, Alison, had offered sympathetically when Ellie had confessed to a heartbreaking "fling" without going into details as to who the man was and where the affair had taken place. "My Charles is a fine man. He has a brother, you know."

Ellie, queasy with morning sickness and a gnawing bitterness, had informed her friend that she never wanted to hear from another man as long as she lived, no matter how fine their brothers were.

Now, as she pushed the noisy vacuum over the carpet of the Ginger Room in the North Wing, Ellie wondered miserably what was going to happen to her. She figured she had, maybe, three or four months before her pregnancy became obvious to everyone. And then she'd be fired, out on her ass with no savings and nobody to turn to for help. With a baby on the way.

If she had the nerve, she'd contact the baby's father. But he was not only wealthy and famous, he was a politician, and Ellie had the uneasy suspicion that he'd know plenty of people who could and would take care of a little problem like a pregnant ex-lover turning up. And it wouldn't be by paying her off, either.

Ellie wasn't that lucky.

The vacuum began making an unholy racket then, and she hastily turned it off. She hadn't noticed anything in the deep pile carpet, but obviously somebody had dropped a coin or something else metallic. She knelt and turned the vacuum on its side, peering at the rotating brush head.

It turned easily under her probing touch, so she shook the vacuum a few times, until what had been rattling around inside dropped to the carpet.

It was a little silver locket, heart-shaped and engraved on the front with a name. Ellie picked it up and studied it. The sort of thing a child might wear, she thought. She used a thumbnail to try prying it open, but it stubbornly resisted her attempts, and she finally gave up.

She knew better than to merely leave it on the nightstand or dresser. Climbing to her feet, she went to her cart in the hall and got one of the envelopes provided for just this sort of thing. She wrote the date, the time, and the room name on the outside, then gave the locket a last look before dropping it into the envelope and sealing it. Then she put the envelope in one of the cart's lower compartments.

"Okay, Missy," she murmured, "your locket will be at the Lost and Found in Housekeeping. Safe and sound."

Then she went back into the Ginger Room and continued her work, the roar of the vacuum drowning the sound of her voice when she murmured aloud, "I just don't know what I'm going to do...."

Diana was glad there was a workshop class scheduled later that morning. Meeting Quentin had shaken her more than she wanted to admit; left with nothing to do but brood over the question of how she had been able to draw a very fair likeness of him before ever setting eyes on him, she might well have bolted.

Instead, she found herself standing in her usual corner of the conservatory, the easel with her large working sketchpad open to a fresh page before her, frowning as she half listened to the pleasant murmur of Beau Rafferty's voice. He was instructing his students to use their charcoal sticks to sketch whatever was uppermost in their minds this morning, whether it be an idea, an emotion, a problem, or whatever else bothered or preoccupied them.

"Don't think about what you're doing," he told them, repeating what he had told Diana privately the day before. "Let your thoughts wander. Just draw."

Diana resisted the impulse to once again sketch Quentin's face.

Instead, she thought about her predawn experience and the maybe-dream of the plea for help traced on a windowpane.

Help us.

Us? Who was "us"? No. Never mind. It was a dream. Only a dream.

Just another strange dream, another symptom, another sign she was getting worse instead of better.

It scared her. This illness of hers had disrupted her life from the time she was eight years old, and twenty-five years was a long time to deal with anything like that. But at least in those early years she had been able to function normally most of the time. There had been some dreams, scattered instances of thinking she had heard someone speaking to her when there had been no one nearby, even eerie glimpses of people or things, like a flicker of motion caught from the corner of her eye but gone when she tried to look straight at them.

Unsettling, to be sure, and it had worried her father when she had mentioned this or that occurrence. But it was only when Diana hit adolescence that the symptoms had begun to seriously interfere with her life.

The blackouts had been the most frightening. "Waking up" to find herself in a strange place or doing something she never would have done consciously. Dangerous things, sometimes. Once, she had opened her eyes to realize, to her terror, that she was up to her waist in the lake near her home.

Fully clothed. In the middle of the night. Just wading out toward the middle of the lake. And at the time, she hadn't been able to swim.

After that, she learned.

What had been called "disturbances" by school officials had led to special private tutors who struggled to complete her education while doctors struggled to find the right combination of medication and therapy to enable her to function.

There were times she was so heavily medicated she'd been little more than a zombie, resulting in whole stretches of her life she could barely remember. Times when new medications caused "adverse" reactions far worse than the symptoms they were meant to treat. And many times when yet another doctor with yet another theory offered hope of a cure only to ultimately admit defeat.

Through it all, through twenty-five years of doctors and clinics and therapies and medications, Diana had, at least, learned to play their games. She had learned, through painful trial and error, which responses and answers would lead to more drugs and which signaled "improvement" to the doctors.

She had learned to fake it.

Not that she didn't sincerely try to get better. Try to listen to what they told her. Try to be as honest as she could, if only silently, to herself, in weighing what she thought and felt.

Because even with all the unsettling, frightening occurrences in her life, with all the confusion in her mind and her troubled emotional state, deep inside herself Diana truly believed she was sane.

Which, sometimes, frightened her most of all.

Beau moved among his students, offering a quiet word or smile here and there, gradually working his way back to the far corner where Diana had set up her easel on the first day. He wondered if she was even aware of what signal that sent, that she cornered herself deliberately, looking out on those around her with wary defensiveness, her back to the wall.

Probably. She didn't lack self-awareness, despite the concerted efforts of mainstream doctors to convince her that she only had to understand herself to be able to heal herself.

Which, of course, was bullshit, at least in the strictest sense.

Diana didn't need to understand herself, she needed to understand her abilities and accept them as natural and normal for her.

She needed to stop believing she was crazy.

As he neared her corner, Beau was conscious of a surge of satisfaction, not unmixed with concern. Her gaze was fixed on the open workbook on her easel, but at the same time it was a distant, unfocused look. She was expressionless, yet her hand moved rapidly, the scratching of charcoal on paper not at all tentative.

Without saying a word, Beau stepped to where he could see what she was drawing. He studied it for a moment, looked at Diana long enough to note her dilated pupils, then moved away as silently as he had approached.

Within a minute or so, he began releasing the other students, one at a time. It was something he had done before, so no one was surprised. He spoke to each briefly, commenting on their work or their mood, listened if they wished to talk to him, and then sent them from the conservatory to get some fresh air or exercise or meditate in one of the gardens, whatever was appropriate for the individual.

He didn't release Diana, or even approach her again.

Instead, Beau took up a position by the open doorway, so that she wouldn't be disturbed by anyone entering the quiet building. He leaned against the casing and looked out toward the gardens, listening to the steady scratching of charcoal on paper and patiently waiting.

If Quentin had learned anything in his years with the SCU, it was that there really was no such thing as coincidence. No matter how random something appeared to be, there was always a connection. Always.

Diana Brisco was here at The Lodge in a troubled search for answers; Quentin was also here searching. The possibility that he could help her with her search told him it was also possible that she could help him with his.

He had no idea how. It seemed bizarre to suppose that she could have any connection with what had happened here twenty-five years before, especially when she had told him this was her first visit to The Lodge. But all his instincts as well as the quiet voice in his mind insisted there was a connection.

All he had to do was find it.

Another man might well have been daunted, but after too many years of sifting through the same information again and again and finding no answers at all, Quentin felt energized at the mere possibility that there was a new avenue to explore. But he had to be cautious, he knew that. Whatever else she was, Diana was emotionally vulnerable; if he pushed too hard or too fast...

So, hard as it was for him to cultivate patience, he forced himself to let a few hours go by before he sought her out. He had breakfast, and then went down to the stables hoping to talk to Cullen Ruppe, the man who had been here at The Lodge twenty-five years before.

It was Ruppe's day off.

Malevolent fate again.

Quentin was left to prowl restlessly around the stables and gardens for a while, before he finally gave in and found out — with some difficulty, given the hotel staff's famous discretion — where the painting workshop was being held.

As he approached the conservatory, he was silently debating how to handle this meeting when he was thrown off balance by a completely unexpected development.

"What the hell are you doing here?" he demanded.

Beau Rafferty smiled. "Teaching a workshop."

Quentin eyed him suspiciously. "Uh-huh. And I suppose Bishop had nothing to do with it?"

"This series of therapeutic artistic workshops," Beau replied pleasantly, "was established years ago. They've been so successful that at least two are held each year. In different parts of the country. Taught by different artists. We're all volunteers and sign up well in advance, supplying information such as the time of year or area of the country in which we'd prefer to teach. Then each of us goes through training so we're better equipped to deal with our troubled students."

"And when did you sign up?" Quentin inquired, his tone just as affable.

"About six months ago."

"Saying you thought April in Tennessee might be nice?"

"Well, it is, isn't it? I suggested The Lodge. I was told it would be the perfect setting."

Quentin sighed. "So Bishop did have something to do with it."

"With putting me here, certainly. But you know as well as I do that what happens next is always up to us. And at the end of the day, I'm just here to teach a therapeutic workshop."

"You're the one who's here to help Diana?" Quentin didn't even try to keep the disappointment out of his voice.

Beau smiled. "I'm just teaching a workshop, Quentin. I don't think either one of us believes that will provide Diana with the answers she's looking for. It may pose a few more questions for her, though."

Frowning, Quentin looked past the other man into the conservatory. He saw Diana in the far corner, standing behind an easel, her face oddly without expression as her right hand moved rapidly. From this angle, he couldn't see what she was drawing, but something about her posture and that curious absence of emotion on her face...

"Is she doing what I think she's doing?" he asked.

"Yeah, she's on autopilot. Has been for nearly half an hour now. The artistic version of automatic writing, totally from the subconscious and whatever psychic senses are tapped."

Quentin looked quickly back at the artist. "Jesus, Beau, you told me yourself that's dangerous as hell."

"It is. It's also the only way, sometimes, to unlock the door blocking us."

"Maybe it's blocking her for a reason."

"There's always a reason, Quentin. And, always, there's a moment when it's time for the door to be unlocked." He paused, adding, "Bishop said to tell you it's time."

"You mean—"

"I mean all the pieces are finally here. All the pieces you need to solve your puzzle."

Quentin stared at him. "Why do all the people around me talk in metaphors?"

"Probably to see that look on your face."

Refusing to laugh, Quentin merely said, "In plain English, did Bishop offer up any sage advice as to how I'm supposed to help Diana?"

"No."

"Free will. Dammit."

"We make our own choices and follow our own paths. Not even Bishop can control what happens once a situation begins to unfold. Obviously, this one is unfolding." Beau glanced back over his shoulder at the absorbed Diana, and added, "She'll be coming out of it any minute now. I don't have to tell you that she'll be...upset. Disoriented. And disinclined to put much trust in a stranger. Be careful, Quentin."

Quentin watched the other man stroll away, muttering under his breath, "Easy for you to say."

He really didn't have a clue how to handle what he strongly suspected was going to be a very difficult interlude. But that had never stopped him before, so he squared his shoulders, drew a deep breath, and went into the conservatory.

He barely glanced at sketches on other easels as he passed them, thinking only that Beau was clearly dealing with a number of emotionally disturbed persons if their drawings were any indication.

When he reached Diana, he studied her face first, noting the dilated pupils and intent but expressionless face. He wasn't sure whether he should touch her or say her name, but before either option could be put to the test, she blinked suddenly, shook her head a little, and dropped the charcoal stick she held, flexing her fingers as though they ached.

"Diana?"

She looked at him, frowning. "What're you doing here?" She sounded not so much dazed as a little sleepy.

"I wanted to buy you lunch," he said, following his instincts.

"Oh. Well — " She glanced at her sketch, then looked back at it quickly, her face going pale and an expression of fear tightening her features.

Quentin reached out to grasp her arm, still following his instincts, and then looked for the first time at what she had drawn. And it was his turn to feel total shock.

Amazingly detailed, especially for a charcoal sketch, it was a view looking out a window from inside. A window seat with pillows framed the view, and through the panes of glass a garden scene was visible. A spring garden, judging from the smudges that were surprisingly vivid little black-and-white portraits of various flowers.

Standing in that scene, looking toward the window, was a girl. She was perhaps eight or nine years old, with long hair and sad, sad eyes. She wore a small heart-shaped locket around her neck.

"My God," Quentin said. "Missy."