Hunting Fear

CHAPTER 12

Did you know it would be Metcalf?" Lucas demanded, nearly two hours later as they gathered once more in the conference room.

Samantha shook her head. "If I'd known that, I would have told you."

"What did you know?" His voice was flat, hard. "I knew there'd be another abduction. But you knew that; it was hardly something I had to tell you."

"What else?"

"Again, what you know yourself. The object of this twisted little game is for the good guys to find the victim before his time runs out." Suddenly thoughtful, she said, "Except that in this case he didn't set a time limit, did he? No ransom demand."

"So how long do I have?"

She looked at him, brows lifting. "I'm supposed to know that?"

"Do you?"

Samantha glanced at the silent Jaylene, then looked back at Lucas and said with deliberation, "Is it with all your women, Luke, or just me? I mean, since this is the second time with us, I have to wonder."

His frown deepened. "What're you talking about?"

"I got close once before. Too close, apparently. And just like now, you spent the morning after grilling me about what I knew or didn't know." She paused, then added coolly, "It hurt a lot, last time. This time it's just pissing me off."

"Sam-"

"I don't have to be here, Luke. I don't have to be involved in this investigation. In fact, I'm sure it would be a lot safer and certainly less troublesome if I went back to the carnival, packed up, and asked Leo to leave a few days early. If I went back to minding my own business. I'm here because I was under the impression that I could help. So why on earth would I lie to you about any of this?"

"Because of last time," he snapped.

Jaylene, watching and listening calmly, was highly aware of the precious minutes ticking past. But she was even more aware of he vital need for these two to come to some understanding; at odds with each other, she thought, both were at least somewhat lamstrung. So she watched, and listened, and said nothing.

"Oh, I see." Samantha shook her head with a bitter little smile. It's revenge I'm after. Is that it? Do you really believe I'd stand by ind allow innocent people to die just because you walked out on ne three years ago? Because if that's the case, Luke, then you lever knew me at all."

"I never-" He stopped, then said evenly, "No, that isn't what I believe. What I believe is that you're holding back on us, Sam. The vision that brought you here-"

"Wouldn't help you find Metcalf or the killer even if I told you every single detail. And as I've already said, I don't intend to share any further details of that vision with you. I have my own reasons for that. You just have to believe-trust-that the reasons I have are good ones."

She held his gaze steadily. "You didn't trust me before. Maybe that's why everything went to hell, or maybe that had nothing to do with it. Either way, this time is a bit different. So you have to decide, Luke. Now. Either you trust me, or you don't. If you do, I'm willing to do whatever I can to help you in this investigation. If you don't, I leave. Now."

"I don't like ultimatums, Sam."

"Call it whatever you like. But make up your mind. Because I'm not going through this little song and dance with you, not again."

Before Lucas could reply, Deputy Champion came into the room, his young face haunted. "Nothing," he reported without waiting to be asked. "No sign of the sheriff anywhere. You guys were at his apartment; did you-"

It was Jaylene who said, "No sign of a struggle or a break-in, though your forensics unit is still out there. His car was in its normal spot. Looks like the bed was slept in."

Lucas turned away from Samantha with a somewhat jerky motion, and said, "Maybe not. He'd been sleeping on the couch, according to what he told me."

Jaylene pursed her lips thoughtfully. "His weapon was on the coffee table, so that fits. And there were a hell of a lot of beer bottles in the kitchen garbage can; I'd say he drank a lot last night."

"He's been drinking every night," Lucas said briefly.

Samantha moved to the opposite side of the conference table from him and sat down, mildly offering her opinion. "I wouldn't have said he was the type to drink until he passed out. So maybe he had help."

Somewhat fiercely, Champion said, "The only way anybody could have taken the sheriff was if he was out cold. Otherwise, he would have fought. And kicked ass. Even if he couldn't get to his gun, he's a black belt, for Christ's sake."

Lucas and Jaylene exchanged glances, and he said, "Which makes some kind of drug even more likely. Wyatt's not a small man, and handling a deadweight isn't easy-but it's a hell of a lot easier than struggling with a big man who knows how to use his muscle."

"Maybe the kidnapper had a gun," Samantha suggested.

"Maybe," Lucas agreed. "Probably. Question is, did he use it to control Wyatt?"

The young deputy was impatient. "The CSU will test all the bottles they found at the sheriff's place," he said. "But even if we find out he was drugged, so what? So what if we know this bastard has a gun? It doesn't help us find the sheriff. Why aren't we out looking for him?"

Quietly, Jaylene said, "The chief deputy is calling in everybody even as we speak, Glen. Every car will be out searching for the sheriff, and every other deputy and detective will be out as well.

"But," Lucas finished, "as yet we have no good way of narrowing down the area that has to be searched. This is a big county, remember? With too damned many inaccessible or remote places."

"Then why aren't you doing your thing?" Champion demanded.

"We've sent the original of the note off to Quantico-"

"Not the FBI thing," Champion said, even more impatiently. The other thing. Your thing. Why can't you feel where he is?"

"It isn't that simple," Lucas said after a moment.

"Why not?"

In the same deliberate tone she had used earlier in a much more private conversation, Samantha said, "Because he has to open himself up in order to do that. And right now, he's closed down tight as a drum."

Lucas turned his head to look at her, an expression almost of shock passing briefly over his features. Without another word, he walked out of the room.

Champion looked bewildered. "Did we make him mad? Where's he going?"

Soothingly, Jaylene said, "Probably just out to check with the chief deputy. Don't worry, Glen; we're going to do everything in our power to find your sheriff."

"Well, let's find him before it's too late, huh?" Champion's tone was a bit uneven suddenly; it was obvious he remembered only too well the sight of Lindsay Graham floating lifelessly in her watery tomb.

"We'll do our best," Jaylene told him. "And you can be a big help. We'll have to recheck those inaccessible locations on the list, and especially check out the ones we didn't get to when we were looking for Lindsay. Form up armed search teams like before, each with at least one member who really knows the terrain."

The deputy nodded and, given a task to accomplish, hurried from the room.

When he was gone, Jaylene looked at Samantha with rising brows. "Do you know what you're doing?"

Half under her breath, Samantha muttered, "Christ, I hope so."

Jaylene nodded, a hunch confirmed. "So it is deliberate, the way you're needling Luke. And has little if anything to do with the last time you two tangled, I'm guessing. Something to do with the vision that brought you here to Golden?"

Samantha frowned down at the table, silent. Her hesitation was obvious; just as obvious was the decision she reached, and her continued silence.

Undaunted, Jaylene said, "It's a dangerous tactic, Sam, pushing him."

"I know."

"He has to do this his own way."

"No. Not this time. This time he has to do it my way."

Wyatt Metcalf was new to terror. Personal terror, anyway. He hadn't honestly felt anything close to terror until Lindsay was taken. Now, as angry and ashamed as it made him, he knew he was terrified for himself. Not that he didn't have reason.

There was a fucking guillotine suspended above his head.

And he was almost completely immobile, strapped down to a table so that all he could do was just barely lift his head. That small movement was just enough for him to see how securely he was strapped in place. It was also just enough to show him that this guillotine was designed a bit differently from those he had seen in pictures.

The table he lay on supported his entire length; no basket was placed below to catch his severed head. Instead, the table bore a deep groove just beneath his neck, where the heavy steel blade would finally come to rest-between his body and his neatly severed head.

The head probably wouldn't even move, except maybe to roll gently to the side.

Jesus.

He tried very hard not to think about that. Or about the rusty-looking stains all along that groove that looked to him like dried blood. Which made it fairly obvious that the kidnapper hadn't tested his little contraption by using heads of cabbage.

Probably on Mitchell Callahan.

Instead of dwelling on that, being a cop, Wyatt tried to get the lay of this place. What little he could see from his position was mostly darkness. Two floodlights-or spotlights-were focused on him and this death machine, which made it pretty difficult to see beyond the glare surrounding him.

"Hey!" he shouted suddenly. "Where are you, you bastard?"

There was no response, and the faint echo told him only that the room was mostly hard surfaces without much if any furniture or carpeting to deaden sound. So he was likely in a basement or cellar or, hell, even a warehouse somewhere. He did have the sense of vastness all around him, lots of space.

But that could have been his imagination, he supposed. Or simply the darkness.

He felt very alone.

And he wondered, suddenly, if this was what Lindsay had gone through. Had she freed herself from the duct-tape bindings- which they had discovered partially cut, presumably so that she could free herself within some given time-only to slowly realize that the glass-and-steel cage in which she was imprisoned would cause her death?

Had she known from the very beginning, or had the bastard toyed with her, allowing her to believe that she might escape the tank? Had she been in the darkness, or in a blinding spotlight as he was? Had the water begun to slowly drip from the pipe, or had it gushed?

With a tremendous effort, Wyatt pushed the useless, haunting questions away.

Lindsay was gone. He couldn't bring her back.

And he was going to join her in death unless he got himself out of this. Or… unless Luke really could do what he claimed.

"I find people who are lost. I feel their fear."

Wyatt thought about that, keeping his head turned and his gaze directed beyond the spotlight and into darkness; it was better than looking up at the damned blade hanging over him.

Could that quiet, intense, steely-eyed federal agent really feel someone else's emotions, their fear?

His first reaction was a deep embarrassment that another man might feel the sick terror crawling inside him, might know that about him.

Wyatt didn't want to believe that Luke-or anyone-could do that. Everything in him shied away from the mere possibility. But… he had to admit that Samantha Burke had been right when she'd told them Lindsay would drown. She had warned Glen Champion about his defective clothes dryer, which very well could have caused a fire. And as hard as he'd tried, Wyatt hadn't been able to connect the carnival seer in any viable way to this kidnapping murderer and his schemes.

And Champion had described to him, in halting, wondering tones, what Luke had done. How he'd been able to find Lindsay, and how eerie and shocking had been his apparent mental or emotional connection with her in the final tormented minutes of her life.

If he was genuine… If Samantha was genuine…

If psychic ability was possible, was real…

Staring into the darkness, facing his own probable death, Wyatt Metcalf wished he had more time. Because if the world did indeed hold such possibilities, then it was far more interesting than he had believed.

Abruptly, he saw a light flicker on, illuminating the face of a digital clock. It was placed in such a way that it was not only visible to him but was almost inescapable. And it wasn't, he realized immediately, showing the time.

It was counting down.

He had less than eight hours to live.

He turned his head back so that he was staring up at that gleaming blade. He focused on it. And grimly began working his hands in an effort to loosen the straps tying him down.

"Why does he have to do this your way?"

Samantha looked across the table at Jaylene. "We both know that Luke's biggest flaw at a time like this is his tendency to shut everybody out. Everybody. His concentration is so fixed, so absolute, that he can barely relate to anything or anyone except the victim he's trying to find."

"He relates to you."

With a wry smile, Samantha said, "Not really, except on a very basic level. If this were his usual type of case, by the end he'd see me only as a warm body in a bed."

"You mean, last time…"

"Yeah, pretty much. He was so shut in himself, so focused on the job in those last days, he barely spoke to me. You remember that much."

Jaylene nodded, reluctant. "I remember. But we were all focused on the job, on finding that child."

"Of course we were. But for Luke… it's like his own ability to focus consumes everything else in him. I know you called it tunnel vision then, I guess trying to warn me."

"For all the good it did."

"Yeah, I suppose I could have been more understanding. But it's not easy to find yourself falling for a man who doesn't even seem to see you half the time. Most of the time, by the end."

"Sam, his focus-that flaw-is also his strength."

"Is it?" Samantha shook her head. "I'm no psychologist, but it seems to me that mental focus and concentration that intense can do a dandy job of holding emotion at bay, or even shutting it down entirely. The very emotion Luke needs to feel."

"Maybe," Jaylene said slowly.

"Haven't you ever wondered, Jay, why he almost always has trouble sensing a victim until he's worked himself to the point of exhaustion?" Samantha asked. "Until he's skipped too many meals and too much sleep and tapped so many of his reserves that here's almost nothing left? It's only when he's literally too tired to think that he finally allows himself to feel. His emotions-and theirs."

"When his guards come crashing down," Jaylene murmured, thoughtful.

"Exactly."

"But when the guards do come down, and he feels what they feel, the sheer strength of their terror virtually incapacitates him. He can barely move or speak."

"And maybe that's one reason he resists feeling that for so long. But if he could open himself up sooner, before a victim's fear has grown so intense and before his own exhaustion was so overwhelming, then maybe he could function. Maybe he could even function with some semblance of normality."

"Maybe."

Samantha looked toward the open doorway as though expecting someone to appear, but added, "It isn't a conscious thing-it can't be. No matter what it costs him, he wants to find these victims so desperately that he'd do anything he could. Consciously. Even incapacitate himself, if that's what it took. So it has to be something buried deep, a barrier of some kind. A wall created at some point in his life when it was necessary to protect a part of him."

"You're talking about some kind of injury or trauma."

"Probably. A lot of our strengths come from some hurt." Samantha frowned again. "You don't know what it is? What might have happened to him?"

Jaylene replied, "No-and I've been his partner for nearly four years. I probably know him as well as anybody, and I know almost nothing of his background. From the point that Bishop found him working as a private consultant on criminal abduction cases five years ago until now, yes. Before that, nothing. Don't even know where he was born or where he went to school. Hell, I don't even know if he's a born psychic. How about you?"

"No. It all happened so fast before. There was so much intensity. The investigation, the media blitz, us. Then the tension of knowing his mind was someplace else even when his body was lying beside mine in bed. We couldn't talk, not then.

"And then it all just stopped, the way those strangely vivid, aberrant periods in our lives tend to end. The investigation was over. And so were we. I… woke up in an empty bed. With Bishop waiting outside the motel to tell me why I couldn't be a member of his Special Crimes Unit. That purple turban. Credibility."

Jaylene hesitated only an instant. "I had no idea it ended quite that abruptly."

Samantha hunched her shoulders more than shrugged. "Bishop said he'd sent you two off on another case, that it was vital you leave immediately and he hadn't given you a choice in the matter. I imagine that was true. Also true that he felt moving Luke on to the next case as soon as possible would be best for him, after the way he blamed himself for that child's death. And… I suppose eaving so abruptly gave Luke a good-enough excuse not to wake ne even long enough to say good-bye."

With a wince, Jaylene said, "I almost wish you hadn't told me that."

Seriously, Samantha said, "Don't let your respect for him be affected by what happened between us. Thinking about it now, I don't think he had much control over how he reacted to me-or how he left me. I think it's all tangled up with that barrier inside him, that refusal to let himself feel until he has absolutely no other choice."

"Those sorts of psychological barriers," Jaylene said, "tend to be real monsters, Sam. The kind that claw us up inside."

"Yeah. I know."

"But it's what you're looking for in Luke. What you're digging or."

Her jaw firmed. "What I have to dig for. What I have to find."

Jaylene studied her for a long moment in silence, then said, "I wish you felt you could tell me what this is all about. I get the feeing it's pretty lonely where you are right now."

"At least you see that. To Luke, I'm being stubborn at best and wantonly obstructive at worst."

"But you understand why that's his reaction. Did you understand that three years ago?"

"No."

"So when he started giving you the third degree the morning after you'd first slept together…"

Samantha replied frankly, "It hurt, like I said."

"I think it hurts a little now too. Even though you know where it's coming from this time."

"Knowing something intellectually is one thing." Samantha's smile twisted. "Feelings are something else again. Anyway, I'm not asking him to love me, I just need him to trust me."

"Do you trust him?"

"Yes," Samantha answered instantly.

"Even though he walked out on you last time? How is that possible?"

Slowly, Samantha replied, "I've trusted him from the moment we met. What I trust is that he won't lie to me and that he'd be there if I needed him."

Jaylene shook her head. "Then you're a better woman than I am. The last time I was dumped, it wasn't nearly as public as what you went through-and I very nearly got a buddy in the IRS to audit him for the previous ten years."

Samantha smiled, but said, "You wouldn't have done that."

"Maybe not. But maybe I would have, if more than my pride had been hurt."

Refusing to admit anything of her own feelings, Samantha merely said, "As your Bishop is so fond of saying, some things have to happen just the way they happen."

"Is fond of saying?"

Samantha lifted her eyebrows inquiringly. "Has he stopped saying it?"

"No," Jaylene replied after a moment.

"Didn't think so. I got the impression it was practically his mantra."

Jaylene eyed her. "Umm. Listen, getting back to the subject of you needling Luke, I gather your plan is to force him to break through whatever that barrier is and find out what's on the other side."

"Something like that."

"Yeah, well, my advice is to be careful. We build walls for reasons, and the reasons tend to be painful. Force somebody to deal with that pain before they're ready to, and you risk a mental breakdown. Force a psychic to deal with buried traumas, with all the extra electromagnetic energy in our brains, and you risk a literal short circuit that can put them-him-beyond anyone's reach. For good."

"I know," Samantha said.

Bishop had told her.

She found him in the storage room of the sheriff's department garage where the glass-and-steel tank was being kept. He was alone and in one hand held a copy of the taunting note the kidnapper had sent him that morning. His gaze moved from the note to the tank and back again.

Samantha came only a step into the room, and asked quietly, "What are they telling you? The note, the tank?"

"That he's a sick bastard," Lucas replied without turning to ice her.

"Besides that."

His gaze went to the tank once more, and he said in a distant tone, "We found several hairs inside the tank, at least a few of them not Lindsay's. I just checked with Quantico, and DNA tests confirmed they belonged to a victim killed in this part of the country some months ago. A woman of Asian descent. Drowned."

"I doubt he missed those hairs."

"So do I. We-I-was meant to find them."

Samantha glanced at the tank, then back at his profile. "What does that tell you?"

"That he used this tank before. Maybe here, or maybe he has some means of transport; there was certainly no evidence it was constructed up at that old mine. Wherever he used it, when his victim was dead, he removed her and left her where she was found-along a creek bed more than fifty miles from here."

"So… chances are Metcalf isn't being threatened with drowning."

"No. I haven't checked to be sure, but memory says at least three of the previous victims, counting the woman, were drowned. Lindsay makes four. I don't know if he had this tank all along or built it at some point in order to better control his victims."

"And to terrify them."

"Yes. And that."

"But now you have it. So maybe he's lost-or given up-one of his murder machines. What does he have left?"

His jaw tightening, Lucas said, "Mitchell Callahan wasn't the only victim to be decapitated. Two others were as well."

"So he has a guillotine."

"It looks that way."

"What else?"

"Three were exsanguinated. A very sharp knife to one or both jugular veins."

"I suppose one could build a machine to do that."

"Yeah, probably."

"By my count we've covered nine or ten of the victims. What about the others?"

"Three were asphyxiated. Not manually."

Samantha had spent too much time considering this not to have a suggestion. "The easiest way to smother someone, slowly, over a period of time, and inflicting the maximum amount of terror… would be to bury them alive."

"I know."

"So a box somewhere, a coffin, buried in the ground. Reusable."

"Probably more than one," Lucas said, still remote. "It's the easiest to recreate. Just a wooden box and a hole in the ground, nothing fancy. And no timer required. Just cover the box with dirt, bury it. Let the air run out. Put in a canister of oxygen if you want to extend the available air a bit."

"That leaves two or three victims. How did they die?"

"I don't know. In those cases, the remains were left out in the ements long enough to leave us very little; no cause of death could be determined with any certainty. They might have been asphyxiated or exsanguinated or drowned. We don't know."

Samantha frowned slightly at that distant tone, but all she said as, "So you know he has at least three machines-or methods- of killing remotely still available to him. That's assuming, of course, that he doesn't resort to quicker, up-close-and-personal methods, like a gun or a knife."

Lucas nodded. "Which, if we're correct, means that right now Wyatt Metcalf is either staring up at a guillotine, trying to claw his way out of a box in the ground, or trying not to get his throat cut."

"Where is he, Luke?"

"I don't know."

"Because you can't feel him."

He was silent.

"What about this kidnapper, this murderer? Can't you feel him? I mean, he certainly seems to have crawled inside your head over the last year and a half."

Lucas swung around to face her, his face tense. "You don't have to tell me that I've failed at every turn," he said, far less remote noW.

"That's not what I'm trying to tell you."

"Oh-right. I'm closed up. 'Tight as a drum,' I think you said."

"That's what I said. Want to deny it?"

"Samantha, I'm investigating an abduction. A series of them. I'm doing my job. Either help me, or else get the hell out of my way."

Samantha allowed a long moment to pass, then said simply, "Okay, Luke." She turned around and left the storage room, and the garage.

He didn't follow her.

She wasn't crazy about walking through the sheriff's department unescorted. None of the cops had said anything to her directly that was openly hostile, but she could feel the stares and the simmering anger. The few who believed she might actually be psychic were angry because she couldn't instantly tell them where their sheriff was, and the majority were convinced she was somehow to blame for all of this. They didn't know how, but she was a handy target.

Samantha didn't really blame them for that reaction; she had seen it before, time and time again; being someone who could always be classed under the heading of "different," she had learned through bitter experience that people were seldom rational when bad things started happening in their lives.

But understanding that didn't make it any more comfortable to walk through a building knowing stares and muttered comments lay in your wake. It was only a matter of time, she knew, until the hostility became open. Unless, of course, she proved herself. Unless she helped find their sheriff.

Samantha thought about that as she worked her way through the building and back upstairs. In the vision that had brought her here, she didn't think this had happened, the sheriff being taken. So the question was, why had it happened this time, with her in the… game?

And what could she do about it?

She paused at the conference-room door only long enough to speak to Jaylene. "I'm headed back to the carnival."

Surprised, the other woman said, "Alone?"

"Looks like. I'd stay if I thought I could help, but the only thing I seem to be doing around here is making all the cops even more tense."

"Most of them won't be here much longer," Jaylene pointed out. "Search teams. We still have that list of remote places to check and double-check."

"Still."

"There's media camped outside. Even more than before, with news of the sheriff's abduction out."

"I know." Samantha hesitated, then said, "I may stop and have a word with them. Luke and I might have been spotted this morning, coming in together, even though it was early. If it comes to that, he could have been seen at the carnival last night, hanging around my booth."

"And you think you can head off speculation?" Jaylene was skeptical. "Sort of doubt it, Sam."

"I'm just a bit curious to find out what's in their suspicious little minds-before the next edition of the newspaper hits the streets, or the six o'clock news on TV."

"Throwing gasoline on a fire."

"Maybe. Or maybe water."

"Luke won't like it."

"He's so pissed at me right now he won't notice. Unless somebody points it out."

The two women gazed at each other for a long moment, and then Samantha smiled and retreated.

Staring after her, Jaylene murmured, "So I need to trust you too, huh, Sam? I wonder if I do? I wonder if I even agree that shaking up Luke might be the best thing for him and the case." She got up, adding under her breath, "Shake nitro, and it blows up in your face. Something to keep in mind."

Then she went in search of Luke.