Hunting Fear

CHAPTER 13

Caitlin had considered leaving her small motel room several times that morning, especially when one of the "local" channels she was almost watching broke the news of Sheriff Metcalf's disappearance and probable abduction. But the most she had done was drive to the nearby cafe to have coffee and one of their huge cinnamon buns while her room was being cleaned.

The two deputies still watching her-or quite likely a new pair on the day shift-kept within her sight but didn't go into the cafe, and she had to wonder how upset they were over having watchdog duty when they undoubtedly wanted to be in on the hunt for their sheriff.

She could sympathize, at least with having to sit around and basically do nothing. It was not fun.

She returned to her room, which now smelled strongly of antiseptic, and resigned herself to a boring day. Dumb soaps on TV, or movies so old they could only be scheduled in the morning dead zone, or news or weather-those seemed to be her main choices for entertainment.

"I need to go to a bookstore," Caitlin said aloud. "God knows how long it'll take the cops to let me back into the apartment so I can do what I have to do there. If I'm going to be stuck here for much longer-"

The television abruptly went out.

Caitlin sat there frozen for what seemed like minutes, then said tentatively, "Lindsay?"

The surprise she felt in that moment, oddly enough, had less to do with the possibility that her dead sister was trying to communicate with her than it did the timing. For some reason, she had it in her head that the spirits were abroad in the wee hours of the night or at least after dark, not in the middle of the morning.

Which assumption, she thought, might not be so far off, as the minutes passed and nothing else happened.

"Lindsay?" she repeated, beginning to feel foolish. And beginning to wonder how soon she could get her only line to entertainment repaired.

Quite abruptly, the lights went out. And since Caitlin had drawn the heavy drapes over the single wide window, the darkness was complete.

"What the hell?" she muttered. She got up out of the chair, hesitated, and took a step toward the nightstand and the dark lamp.

Something touched her shoulder.

Caitlin whirled around, trying to see-and seeing nothing. "Lindsay? Dammit, Lindsay, you got my attention, you don't have to scare the shit out of me!"

She stood there in the darkness, half mad and half scared, and wondered suddenly if she had imagined that touch. Surely she had. Surely.

Because there was nothing after death, nothing, and wishing there was didn't make it so. Lindsay couldn't be trying to communicate with her, because Lindsay was dead, dead and gone, with all the rest only a figment of her guilty and grieving imagination-

She heard a faint scratching sound that made the hair stand up on the back of her neck.

Long seconds passed, only the soft scratching disturbing the silence.

Then, abruptly, the lights came back on. With a click, the TV also came back on. The very normal sound of human voices filled the silence.

Caitlin stood frozen, blinking for a moment in the sudden light before her gaze focused on the nightstand. Even without moving closer, she could see that the notepad lying there had something written on it.

Before the lights went out, it had been blank.

She drew a breath and went over to the nightstand, picking up the notepad with shaking hands.

HELP THEM, CAIT HELP THEM FIND WYATT YOU KNOW MORE THAN YOU THINK

"Miss Burke, is it true you helped the police locate the body of Detective Lindsay Graham?"

"No, it is not true," Samantha answered the reporter calmly. "Solid police work located Detective Graham."

"Not in time to save her life," somebody muttered.

"The killer meant her to die. That's what killers do. It's obviously a mistake to think of this… person… as anything other than a cold-blooded murderer." Again, Samantha was calm, her tone even. She stood on the top step of the front entrance of the sheriff's department and looked at the small herd of media eager to hear whatever she had to say.

No TV media, thank goodness. She wondered how long her luck on that would hold out, how much time she had before she found herself starring in the six o'clock news. It had only been avoided this far because the "local" TV stations were nearly a hundred miles away in Asheville, and they'd had a few major crimes of their own on which to concentrate in the past few weeks. They had sent a reporter to cover the murders and kept fairly up to date on the facts of the investigation, but so far hadn 't ventured into speculation about the carnival or Golden's visiting seer.

Heavy local coverage that did speculate in the print media was bad enough, but Samantha was prepared for that. If the regional television stations started paying real attention to the story, then it would be only a matter of time before everything hit the national spotlight-and the fan.

She was gambling that wouldn't happen, even knowing that with every abduction and murder they were moving closer to a much larger and very unwelcome spotlight.

"Are you helping the police now, Miss Burke?" the first reporter asked. She had her little cassette recorder held high, and avid green eyes fixed on Samantha.

Aware of the door behind her opening, Samantha said deliberately, "That appears to be a question open to discussion, at the moment."

"How could you help?" another reporter demanded, rather aggressively. "Look into your crystal ball?"

Samantha opened her mouth to reply just as Luke grasped her arm and turned her toward the door, saying to the reporters, "Miss Burke has nothing more to say. And you'll be updated on the facts of the investigation when the sheriff's department has information to share with you."

A barrage of questions were yelled after them, but Lucas merely pulled Samantha into the building and around a corner to be out of sight of the reporters before demanding, "What the hell did you think you were doing?"

He was pissed. And it showed.

Samantha eyed him for a moment, then held up her right hand to display the palm. If anything, the marks burned there by a steering wheel, a ring, and a spider-and-web pendant were even clearer than they had been before.

"Pity you stopped me," she said mildly. "I was just about to show them this."

"Why?" Lucas demanded.

She shrugged. "Well, the killer's already watching me; I just thought it was time to give him some idea of what I can do."

"Are you out of your mind? Jesus, Sam, why not just paint a bull's-eye on your back?"

"And why not rattle the son of a bitch if we can? Why not make him wonder if maybe, just maybe, he's not quite as in control of this little game of his as he thinks he is? Everything's been going exactly as he planned so far, so maybe it's time we changed that. I don't know if there's an equivalent in chess to a wild card, but that's me. And I say it's time we let him know the rules just went right out the window."

Lucas was about to say something in response to that-what, he wasn't sure-when he realized, abruptly and belatedly, where they were. In the doorway of the bull pen.

He looked away from Samantha to find that every cop in the place was staring at them with open interest. And even though he felt some embarrassment over losing control, and more than a little anger at the moment, he also noticed that a few faces that had shown open hostility toward Samantha now appeared at least as thoughtful as they were unfriendly.

"When are the search parties going out?" he asked the chief deputy, whose desk was nearest the door.

Vance Keeter looked down at the clipboard in his hand as if it would answer, then said quickly, "Ten minutes, and everybody should be ready to go."

"Good," Lucas snapped, and headed down the hallway to the conference room, pulling Samantha along with him.

She allowed herself to be towed, a little amused and more than a little interested in this definitely less-controlled side of Lucas. Not that he needed to know that. So the moment they were in the conference room, she jerked her arm away.

"Do you mind?"

Jaylene, bent over a map spread out on the table, looked up at them in mild surprise, then sat down in the chair behind her. "Hey, Sam. Thought you were leaving."

She was good, Samantha thought admiringly, even as she was saying, "I got hauled back in here-and got scolded like a kid in front of the entire sheriff's department. Which I don't at all appreciate, by the way."

"You're damned lucky I didn't arrest you on the spot," Lucas retorted. "I can make an obstruction charge stick, Sam, and you'd better keep it in mind."

"You might make it stick as far as court, but you'll play hell proving it," Samantha snapped right back. "I'm not an employee of the sheriff's department or the federal government, which means I'm free to speak my mind to the press if I so desire. And I have done nothing, absolutely nothing, that a rational person would define as obstructing this investigation."

"You had no business saying anything to the press about the investigation."

"I didn't tell them anything they didn't already know."

"That's beside the point, Sam."

"No, that's entirely the point. All I did was finally stop a minute and answer a few of their questions about me. Me, personally. Which is totally my business. And will probably increase my business, now that I think about it."

Lucas refused to wander from the point. "About you? What the hell did you tell them?"

"I told them that sometimes I have visions when I touch things and that the killer left an object in Lindsay's apartment, which I touched. And which told me that this killer is a soulless bastard who feeds on fear."

"Jesus Christ." Lucas was beyond grim.

"Like I said-I want him to know what I can do."

"What makes you think he doesn't already know what you can do?"

Samantha merely said, "If that's the case, no harm done, right?"

"No harm done? God, you're making me crazy."

"Good." She took a step toward him and, in the same fierce tone, demanded, "Where's Wyatt?"

"How the hell should I know?" He was just as fierce, torn between anger at her irresponsibility in talking to the press and surprise that she would do something so reckless, and hardly knew what he was saying.

"You know where he is," she snapped. "Think about it. Feel it. Where is he? Where's Wyatt?"

"Goddammit, how should I-"

Six hours left. Six fucking hours…

Lucas went very still, instinctively trying to listen to that whisper in his head.

…no way to get loose… goddamn guillotine…

"It's the guillotine," he murmured. "Wyatt's strapped into a guillotine."

"Where?" Samantha snapped, her tone still fiercely insistent.

"He doesn't know."

"What does he feel? What's around him?"

"Space. Darkness. Maybe a basement."

"Some part of him felt it when he was being moved, even if he was out cold. What did he feel? Where is he?"

"He doesn't know."

"Listen. Feel. Remember what he can't."

"Water. Running water. A stream."

"What else? Was it dark when he was moved?"

"Yes."

"Was it near dawn? Did he hear birds?"

"Birds. A rooster."

"Dirt roads, or paved?"

"Paved-only for a few minutes. Then dirt. A very rough dirt road. A long time 'til it stopped."

Watching in complete fascination even as she took quick notes, Jaylene almost held her breath. After four years of working with him, she had believed she was as good as anyone could be at directing and focusing Lucas's abilities, but she acknowledged silently, now, that Samantha's method was masterly. At least this time.

The question was, what would it do to Luke?

"Which direction was he moving in?" Samantha demanded.

"He doesn't-"

"He knows. Somewhere inside him, he knows. He has an internal compass, we all do. Find it. Which direction?"

After a long moment, Lucas said, "Northwest. Always northwest."

"Northwest from his home?"

"Yes."

Less than six hours… oh, Jesus…

Abruptly, Lucas was back, that wispy tendril of contact snapped. He blinked at Samantha, then sat down, hardly aware that Jaylene had positioned a chair for him.

"Less than six hours," he said slowly. "Wyatt has less than six hours left. There's a clock counting down. He can see it." He was a little pale.

So was Samantha. But as she joined them at the table, her voice was perfectly calm, even cool. "That wasn't so hard, was it?"

Jaylene half expected an explosion from Lucas, but he was staring at Sam, curiously intent.

"That's why you've been needling me all morning," he said.

She didn't deny it, saying merely, "You shut down on me once before. Think I'm going to let that happen again? I'd rather you were pissed and snapping at me than looking right through me. Besides, if there's a hope of finding the sheriff alive, you're it."

"You said I couldn't win without you."

"And maybe this is why. Because I can piss you off. A dubious talent, but mine own." With a shrug, she added briskly, "Anyway, now we have a slightly narrower area to search. And we know how much time is left on the clock."

Jaylene was once more bent over the map spread out on the conference table. She pinpointed the sheriff's house, then drew a straight line out from it to the northwest. "How far do I take this? To the Tennessee line?"

Looking away from Samantha at last, Lucas got to his feet and joined his partner. "Yeah. For now. We may have to extend it, but that covers a lot of area."

Pursing her lips thoughtfully, Jaylene said, "And if we start with, say, twenty miles on either side of the line…" She marked the arbitrary boundaries on the map.

They both stared down at what was a considerable search area, its only saving grace the fact that it contained at least half of the small red flags marking specific areas already on their search list.

"Could be worse," she murmured.

Before Lucas could respond, Samantha spoke up to say, "There was a stream. That should narrow it down a bit more."

"And roosters along the way," Jaylene said. "That takes it well out of town, at least from what I've seen. And the fact that he was on a rough dirt road most of the time means we '11 be away from all the main roads in the area."

Glen Champion appeared in the doorway, clipboard in hand. "All the search teams are ready," he said. "But I wanted to check with you before we finalize assignments."

"Good," Lucas said, gesturing him closer. "We want to concentrate on this area."

The deputy didn't question it, just bent over the map, studying it with a frown. "There are at least eight places on our list out in that general area. I've got five search teams ready to go-six if you guys want to join in again."

Immediately, Jaylene said, "Luke, why don't you and Sam go with Glen, and I'll join one of the other teams."

"I'm not a cop," Samantha said, not so much protest as simple statement of fact.

"We can deputize you," Glen said, rather uncertainly.

Her smile was faint. "I don't think that would go over very well with the other officers."

"I'll take official responsibility for Sam going along," Lucas said. Then, to Jaylene, he said, "Think you might pick up something?"

"I don't know, but we might as well spread our assets as far as possible. Sam can clearly keep you focused if you manage to make contact, and I may be more help elsewhere." She eyed Glen. "Though I'd prefer to be on a team most likely to accept a request for a change in direction if I do happen to pick up something."

He looked at his clipboard, saying, "Then I'd suggest you go with John Prescott's group. His grandmother had the sight, and he's been pretty vocal in support of Miss Burke."

"He has?" Samantha said in mild surprise.

"Not all of us think you're a witch," Glen said frankly.

She winced. "I'm glad."

Lucas smiled slightly. "Then, if you don't mind, Glen, Sam and I will go with you."

"S'fine by me. How do you want to divvy up the search area? I mean, which location do you want to search?"

From the doorway, Caitlin Graham said in a voice holding more doubt than certainty, "Maybe I can help with that."

Less than six hours.

Wyatt could feel himself begin to sweat. This place, wherever it was, held a damp chill, yet sweat beaded on his forehead and temples and ran down into his hair.

He tried not to look at the clock, but it was placed in such a way that he almost had to.

Five and a half hours now.

Five and a half fucking hours left.

Those red seconds counting inexorably down. Fifty-nine, fifty-eight, fifty-seven… And then, when it reached zero, to see another minute gone, the next minute counting down with relentless detachment: fifty-nine, fifty-eight, fifty-seven…

"It's my fucking life!" he wanted to shout. He knew it was irrational, to see the clock as something alive and watching him, measuring his time left so cavalierly, but he could hardly help how he felt.

Desperation, that's what he felt. A deep, gnawing terror.

He wondered, suddenly, if he should stop trying to damp down that sick dread, holding it all inside. Should he just let it out, let it go? Scream out his fear, and to hell with his stupid pride? Because if Luke could really sense fear…

Wyatt gritted his teeth and muttered a curse under his breath. He couldn 't do it. Not deliberately. It went against his very nature to give in to fear. If he gave in to fear, then the bastard doing this to him would win.

He stared up at the gleaming guillotine, and once more went to work trying to loosen the straps binding his raw wrists.

"I can't be sure about it," Caitlin said. "I mean, even assuming that note really was from Lindsay, the fact that this is the only area on the map that seemed familiar to me probably doesn 't mean anything. Really." She had uneasily offered the same disclaimer twice since they had left the station.

"We were going to search this general area anyway," Lucas told her. "And your hunches are probably as good or better than any of ours."

"But I never lived around here. It's just that Lindsay was more apt to send a card with a note jotted inside, or write a letter, than she was to call. And she talked about the place, the countryside. She mentioned hiking somewhere around Six Point Creek, and it was an unusual enough name that I remembered it. That's all."

"Maybe that's what she was counting on you to remember," Samantha said.

"Then why didn't she just write Wyatt's at Six Point Creek?"

"They never do," Lucas murmured.

"Maybe the universe won't let them," Samantha suggested. "Too much help from beyond would make things too easy for us."

"And why the hell can't they be easy?" Caitlin demanded.

Samantha smiled. "You'd have to ask the universe. All I know is that my visions tend to complicate rather than simplify my life. After a while, you sort of get used to that."

Sticking determinedly with the normal rather than paranormal, Glen said, "We know there's an old mill on the creek that hasn't been used in donkey's years, but last time I was hiking up here it looked in pretty good condition. There's a big cellar cut into the granite back away from the creek, where the people who used to live in the area kept most of their food. Sort of communal storage. Not that there were many who tried to make a go of things way up here."

"In any case," Lucas said, "all those qualities could make it a prime spot for someone needing a remote location, privacy, and a virtually soundproofed, enclosed space in which to hold someone, even though it wasn't on our list. So we search it."

"A deputy, a fed, and two civilians," Samantha said rather dryly. "Wouldn't the press love this."

"With any luck at all, they won't know about it," Lucas said. "They were told in no uncertain terms to remain back at the sheriff's department, and two deputies made sure they did while the rest of us left. We don't need reporters tagging along on a search, especially in this kind of country."

"It is wild," Glen agreed, hanging on to the ATV's wheel as the vehicle bounded across a washed-out section of the dirt road they were following. "Don't forget that fugitives-federal fugitives- have successfully hidden out up here for years on end."

"And don't think our killer didn't have that in mind when he picked Golden," Luke said. "This is the perfect area for him, with plenty of remote land, many with old settlements, abandoned cabins and barns, even a few defunct mines. Lots of hiding places we'll have to work hard even to get to. He planned well, all right. And he has no doubt that he'll accomplish everything he sets out to."

From the backseat beside Samantha, Caitlin said, "What's he accomplishing, beyond killing people?"

"In his mind, he's winning the game," Luke told her. "Every victim we weren't able to save just proved to him that he's smarter than we are."

"Sick bastard," she muttered.

Samantha said, "Broken minds. I do wonder what broke his. I mean, if he wasn't born this way. Luke, did you draw any other conclusions from that note he sent you this morning?"

"He feels in complete control of the situation, you were right about that," Lucas replied. "His confidence borders on cockiness, even a sort of giddiness. It's as if… as if he's reaching the end of a long path and he feels he can begin to relax. That bit about there being only one rule, and then the line Guess what it is is almost playful."

Samantha was silent for a moment, then said, "Why did he take the sheriff?"

"To up the ante, maybe."

"Snatching a law-enforcement officer from beneath everyone's nose?" Samantha frowned. "But he did that with Lindsay. Would he repeat himself? I mean, now that you know it's a game, a competition. Would he?"

Lucas turned in his seat to look at her. "No. He wouldn't."

"Okay. Then why the sheriff? If he isn't repeating himself, then he must have another reason. Something personal, maybe?"

"I don't know."

With wonderful politeness, Samantha said, "This is the point where you tap into your other senses."

"Needling me again won't work, Sam."

"Think so?"

In some surprise, Caitlin said, "You're psychic too?"

"He is sometimes," Samantha told her. "When he lets himself be. Control issues. You know how it is."

"Cut it out, Samantha."

"That means he's getting pissed at me. He only uses my whole name when I've irritated him."

Ignoring that, Lucas looked at his watch and said, "Less than four hours left now. Glen, is there a shorter way?"

"Only if you're a bird. Those of us on the ground have to take this lousy dirt road that leads to an old logging road that's even worse. It'll take us another hour, easy."

Caitlin said desperately, "But what if I'm wrong? You had decided to search another spot, hadn't you, before I showed up? Something already on your list?"

Still twisted around in his seat in order to see her, Lucas said, "I hadn't made up my mind, Caitlin. But, as I said, your hunch is probably as good as anyone else's, and this mill on the creek sounds a likely place."

"And," Samantha said in that same spuriously polite tone, "following your hunch rather than one of his own sort of absolves Luke of responsibility, you know?"

Instantly, Lucas said, "You know goddamned well that isn't true. If I didn't believe we could find Wyatt up here, I wouldn't have come. If we don't find him, it certainly won't be Caitlin's fault."

"No, of course not. So whose fault will it be, Luke? Who gets the blame if Wyatt Metcalf dies because we couldn't find him in time?"

"Me. I get the blame. Is that what you want to hear?"

"No, I want to hear you feeling what he feels, right now, this minute."

"Don't you think I'm trying?"

"As a matter of fact, I don't."

"You're wrong."

"No, I'm not, because you're still closed up. Think I can't feel that, Luke? Lie to yourself if you want, but you can't lie to me, not about this."

Caitlin, following the quick, back-and-forth conversation warily, half expected the two to come to blows. She'd never heard either of them sound so fierce, but she barely knew Lucas and wasn't sure how unusual it was for him. It was Samantha's pitiless determination that surprised her; she would never have expected such force from the slight, watchful, quiet woman she'd thought she knew.

Seemingly transformed by anger, Samantha was leaning as far forward as her seat belt would allow, one hand gripping the shoulder strap and the other braced on the seat. Her face was tense, her heavy-lidded eyes narrowed and normally full lips thinned, and every word bit with sharp teeth when she repeated, "Not about this."

"You're not a telepath, Sam," Lucas retorted.

"I don't have to be. Think I can't read you, Luke? That I couldn 't always read you, all the way down to your bones, to your soul? Think again."

"Sam-"

Abruptly, in a soft voice that was nevertheless audible over the straining engine of the ATV, Samantha said, "I even know about Bryan, Luke."

By sheer chance Caitlin's gaze happened to be on Lucas when Samantha spoke, and she wanted to look away from what she saw.

Shock, and then a flash of pain, intense, raw, draining the color from his face. He looked like a man who had just been knifed in the gut.

"How could you-"

"Feel," Samantha snapped, her voice intense again. "Damn you, open up and feel."

Clearly unhappy, Glen Champion said, "Hey, you guys-is this really the time? I mean-"

"You just drive," Samantha ordered, never taking her eyes off Lucas. "Feel, Luke. Reach out. Open up. Wyatt Metcalf is going to die if you can't connect with him. Do you really think the kidnapper is going to leave his victim in a place you're likely to search? No, not this time, not again. He meant you to find Lindsay, meant her to die before you could get there, but he won't take a chance you might find Metcalf in time, so he's hidden him from you, very deliberately."

"I don't-"

"Where is he, Luke? He won't be anywhere on the map, on that list you've drawn up. He won't be anywhere you expect. And when time's run out and Metcalf is dead, you'll get another taunting message telling you exactly where you can find the body. Do you want that? Do you?"

"Stop."

Glen jammed his foot on the brake, instinctively obeying the harsh order.

Softly now, Samantha repeated, "Where is he, Luke?"

"North," Lucas replied slowly.

"At the old mill?"

"No. North."

"This road is pretty much a straight shot northwest," Glen said, bewildered. "There isn't another, at least not for miles."

"North," Lucas said again.

Caitlin thought he looked almost hypnotized, not quite there with them but somewhere else. At the same time, his gaze was fixed on Samantha, and there was certainly awareness of her in his eyes.

"How far?" she asked him.

"A mile, maybe."

"Glen? How long will it take us to cover a mile in this terrain?" She never took her eyes off Lucas.

"Christ, I don't-experienced hikers in good shape and with the right equipment could do it in an hour or thereabouts. But I don't know about you guys. North from here is straight up the fucking mountain."

"We'll just have to do the best we can," Samantha said briefly. "Let's go."

Caitlin was more than a little surprised to find herself out of the vehicle and going along, climbing up a steep slope with the help of the deputy while Lucas and Samantha led the way. Nobody had told her specifically to go or stay, Caitlin just went, her fascinated gaze fixed whenever possible on the couple ahead.

No longer staring at each other, they were nonetheless connected, holding hands whenever possible but connected in a less tangible and possibly stronger way as Samantha determinedly kept him focused. From time to time Caitlin could hear her calm yet curiously relentless voice, asking the same question again and again.

"What does he feel, Luke?"

Caitlin heard the question asked over and over, but only once did she hear the response. His voice low, haunted, Lucas said, "Terror. He's afraid. He knows he's going to die."

Caitlin shivered and grasped a sapling with one hand, grimly pulling herself up the steep, rocky slope.