Hunting Fear

CHAPTER 6

I just want to know if he's going to ask me to the homecoming dance." Her voice was so nervous it wobbled, but it was determined as well, and her blue eyes were fixed on Samantha's face with desperate intensity.

Samantha tried to remember what it felt like to be sixteen and so desperate about so many things, but even so she knew she had nothing in common with this pretty teenage girl or her ordinary life. There had been no homecoming dance for Samantha, no high-school rituals or worries about the right dress or who the football team's star quarterback would ask out on Friday night.

At sixteen, Samantha's worries had included putting in long hours to earn enough money so she didn't starve, preferably without selling her body or soul in the process.

But she felt no resentment toward this girl, and her voice- lower and more formal than her usual speaking voice but with no fake accent-remained calm and soothing. "Then that is what I will tell you. Concentrate on this boy, close your eyes, and picture his face. And when you are sure you have his image in your mind, give me your hand."

She had been using her crystal ball earlier in the evening, but for some reason tonight it had bothered her eyes to stare into it, so she had abandoned that prop for the less dramatic but more direct and often more accurate palm reading.

The teenager sat with eyes closed and pretty face screwed into fierce concentration for a moment, then opened her eyes and thrust out her right hand.

Samantha held it gently in both of hers, bending forward over it to seemingly peer intently at the lines crisscrossing the palm. She traced the lifeline with a light finger, more for effect than because she was "reading" the actual line.

She knew a bit more about palmistry than the average person- but only a bit more.

Her own eyes half closed, she was seeing something far different from the girl's hand. "I see the boy in your mind," she murmured. "He is wearing a uniform. Baseball, not football. He is a pitcher."

The girl gasped audibly.

Samantha tilted her head to one side, and added, "He will ask you out, Megan, but not to the homecoming dance. Another boy will ask you to the homecoming dance."

"Oh, no!"

"You will not be disappointed, I promise you. This is the boy you are meant to be with at this time in your life."

"When?" Megan whispered. "When will he ask me?"

Samantha knew the exact day but also knew how to make her revelation sound more mysterious and dramatic. "On the next full moon," she said. She glanced up in time to see a baffled look cross the girl's face and was tempted to dryly advise her to look at a calendar. Or to look up at the sky, since the late-afternoon storms had passed and a bright nearly full moon shone hugely.

Samantha couldn't remember if it was a harvest moon or a hunter's moon, though the latter struck her as either an apt coincidence or a deliberate sense of timing by the kidnapper.

"Oh, Madam Zarina, thank you!"

As Samantha released the girl's hand, she couldn't help but add, "Choose the blue dress. Not the green one."

Again, Megan gasped, but before she could say anything, Ellis appeared from the draperies behind Samantha and swept the girl out of the booth.

Samantha rubbed her temples briefly and drew a breath, trying to keep focused. Then Ellis returned, alone.

"What, am I done?" Samantha demanded.

"Are you kidding? You've got at least a dozen people waiting in line, and Leo says another dozen tickets have been sold so far tonight."

"Well, then?"

"I told them you were taking a ten-minute break. Word's spreading about your accuracy tonight, so nobody's complaining." Ellis vanished behind the draperies again, then returned with a big mug. "I've brought you some tea."

She had known Ellis too long to waste time arguing, so Samantha merely accepted the tea and sipped it. "Sweet. I'm not in shock, you know."

"No, but you need fuel and I know damned well you won't eat anything until you're done tonight. You've been at this two hours nonstop, and it doesn't take another psychic to feel your energy draining away."

"I'm a little tired. It'll pass."

Sitting down in the client chair, Ellis said, "Judging by the reactions-yours as well as theirs-I'm guessing you've been getting hits all night. Psychic hits, I mean. Yes?"

"Yeah. It's sort of weird, really. Not full-blown visions, just these flashes of images. And knowledge. I've never been so… on… before."

"Why, do you think?"

"Dunno. That weird vision earlier today might have changed something. Maybe left me more plugged in than usual, for however long it lasts."

"You're not doing any cold reading at all?"

Samantha shook her head. It was something she had done in the past and would undoubtedly do in the future-and it was the sort of thing that made cops like Sheriff Metcalf suspicious. Because a really good "seer" could read the body language and "tells"-physical tics and gestures, usually unconscious-of her clients, weaving a subtle pattern of guesswork and half-truths into something that appeared to be genuine psychic ability.

Or magic.

She wasn't particularly proud of that but, as Ellis had noted, Samantha had a highly practical nature and she did what she had to do in order to make her way in the world. The sign outside her booth clearly stated that she read for entertainment purposes only, and she weighed her clients carefully before offering them anything more than a show, wary of those who were too desperate or too gullible.

Usually they were like young Megan, anxious to know about their love lives, or whether a promotion at work was forthcoming, or where they could find the strongbox full of cash supposedly buried somewhere in the backyard by Great-Uncle George.

But sometimes… sometimes their faces were pale and beaded with desperate sweat, and their eyes were glazed, and their voices were so strained it was like listening to an animal in pain. Those were the ones Samantha did her best to recognize early, before already-intense emotions got out of control.

Half a lifetime of experience helped; she had more than once given a deliberately vague reading in order to avoid either upsetting or encouraging a client in a fragile mental state.

"Then everything you've told the clients tonight has been the truth?" Ellis demanded.

"Pretty much. It's been harmless, mostly. Though I did see a couple of things I didn't think they could handle, so I kept them to myself."

"Tragedies?"

"Yeah. I saw one lady die in a car accident about six months from now-and knew there was nothing I could tell her to change the outcome." She shivered and took another swallow of the hot, sweet tea. "You want to tell them to go hug their kids or make peace with their mothers, or make that list of the ten things they want to do before they die and damned well do them now. But you know-I know-they'd only fall apart if they believed me at all, and that would just make the rest of their lives miserable. So I don't tell them. I just look at them… and hear the clock ticking off the time they have left. Jesus, it's creepy knowing stuff like that."

"I guess it would be. Do you believe in fate, Sam? You've never said."

"I believe some things have to happen just the way they happen. So, yeah, I guess I do. Up to a point."

"Free will?"

Samantha smiled wryly. "That is the point. I wouldn't like to think my every move and decision had been mapped out before I was born. But I do believe the universe puts us in a position to make decisions and choices that will determine the next fork in the path. Change your decision-and you find yourself on a different path."

"Is that why we're here in Golden right now?"

Samantha drank more of the tea, frowning.

"Or you could just tell me to mind my own business."

"It is your business. You're here too."

Ellis smiled faintly. "So… are we here because of your path, or Luke's?"

With a slight grimace, Samantha replied, "Six of one and half a dozen of the other."

"So you're both on the same path?"

"No. Our paths just… intersected. The way they did once before. And I'd really like to be able to move on this time without feeling like I've… dropped acid and been half eaten by a lion."

Both Ellis's brows shot up. "Lovely imagery. Dropped acid? That's more my generation than yours."

Samantha frowned. "Maybe I picked it up from you. But, anyway, the gist stands. When it was over, I felt like I'd been out of my mind and got mauled because of it. By something with teeth and claws."

"I wouldn't have thought Luke was that ferocious."

"You weren't close to him."

"Were you?"

After a moment of silence, Samantha drained her mug and handed it back to Ellis. "I think my break is over. If you'll please tell the next client he or she can come in, I'll let you go off and check on the concessions." Ellis oversaw food and snacks at the carnival as well as serving as their nurse.

She got up without protest, saying merely, "You can avoid the question when I ask, Sam, but you'd better be honest with yourself. Especially now. Because I've got a hunch it would have taken a pretty strong reason for you to deliberately cross paths with Luke again. Like maybe… a life-and-death reason? And when a moment like that comes, the decisions are pure instinct, straight from the gut and the heart."

"Lovely imagery," Samantha muttered.

Ellis smiled. "The gist stands." She turned toward the front doorway of the booth, adding, "Your turban's crooked."

Swearing under her breath, Samantha reached up to straighten the hated thing. Her fingers lingered on the old, fragile purple silk and skimmed over the glittering rhinestones, and she sighed.

Credibility. Or the lack thereof.

Luke and the rest of the Special Crimes Unit had the respected might of the federal government behind them, and even if the long history of the FBI had at times been somewhat checkered, respect for the men and women who served had certainly survived.

Behind Samantha was the Carnival After Dark, loud and colorful and intended as pure fun. Games and rides and sideshows. Like hers.

Like her.

But what had been her choices in the beginning? Precious few. One, really. One choice. One decision. Invent Zarina, with all her seductive mysticism and drama-or starve.

She'd been fifteen the first time she put on the turban. She had begun hanging around the Carnival After Dark when it passed close to New Orleans, where her hitchhiking had taken her. Offering to tell people's fortunes on street corners had done little except get her arrested once or twice even in the Big Easy, and she'd thought a carnival might need or at least want a fortuneteller.

Leo had agreed-once she'd told him somewhat pugnaciously that his mother had been an opera singer, his father a doctor, and that the carnival's knife-thrower had a drinking problem, would nick his assistant's ear at that night's show, and was going to kill somebody if his knives weren't taken away from him.

All correct, at least up to her prediction of that evening's show; after that, he fired the knife-thrower.

And Samantha had joined the Carnival After Dark. She had, over the years, honed and refined her "act." Draping herself in swaths of colorful fabric, and clinking fake gold jewelry, applying heavy makeup to look older-and borrowing a turban Leo's mother had worn on some of the finest stages of Europe.

Samantha hadn't set out to become a carnival mystic. She wasn't at all sure why she hadn't, somewhere along the way, opted out and chosen to do something else with her life, especially once she'd gained confidence and had a little savings and the fear of starvation had left her. Because it had been easier, she supposed, to drift along day after day, year after year, being with people she liked and doing work that demanded little of her. Isolated and insulated in her own little traveling bit of the world.

At least until Luke had come along.

Looking down at her hands folded atop the satin-draped table, she heard the swish of sound as Ellis brought the next client in and then disappeared silently through the curtain behind Samantha.

Beginning her usual spiel, Samantha said, "Tell Madam Zarina what it is you wish to know about-" She had been about to add "tonight" but didn't bother when a ring dropped onto the table near her hands.

"I heard it helps if you touch things." The woman's voice was even, controlled. "So I brought that. Would you touch it, please?"

Samantha looked up slowly, knowing at once that this was one of the desperate ones. She had lost something, someone. She needed answers, and needed them badly.

A brown-eyed blonde of about thirty, she was pretty and casually dressed. And she was haunted. Her face was drawn, her hands writhed together in her lap, and her posture was so tense she practically trembled from the strain of holding herself still. She wanted to do something, was driven to take action, any action. This action.

Samantha looked at the ring. A birthstone, she thought. Opal. Plain band with the stone inset, small size. A child's?

She returned her gaze to the woman and said, "Some lost things can never be found."

The woman's mouth quivered, then steadied. "Will you try? Please?"

All Samantha's instincts told her to refuse, to make some excuse, refund this woman's money, and stop this now. But she found herself reaching out, picking up the ring.

The darkness swept over her immediately, and the cold, and she was choking, drowning.

Samantha was never sure afterward if it was the instinct for self-preservation or just the utter certainty of how the vision would end-and how she would end if she remained caught up in it-but whichever it was caused her to drop the ring. And just as suddenly as she'd been drawn into the vision, she was yanked out of it.

She stared at the ring lying on the table, then looked at her palm, where a circular white line now lay across the fading red line that was all that was left of the earlier frostnip.

"Shit." She lifted her gaze to the woman and found her pale, her eyes both shocked and eager.

"You saw something. What did you see?"

"Who are you?"

"Don't you know? Can't you-"

"Who are you?"

"I'm-Caitlin. Caitlin Graham. Lindsay's sister."

Despite the clear skies and bright moon, Lucas and Jaylene were having a frustratingly slow and difficult time of it. Not to mention exhausting. And judging by the intermittent radio and cell contact with the other two teams, they weren't the only ones; the terrain in these isolated spots was so rough it was as though they had been swallowed up by some more-primitive time, the strained roar of their vehicles' engines alien. When they could use vehicles, that was.

Sometimes, it was literally hacking their way through clinging, thorny underbrush.

Jaylene held the flashlight to illuminate the map spread out on the hood of their vehicle, and Lucas crossed off the second property on their list.

"At this rate," he said, "we don't have a hope in hell of covering all these places by tomorrow afternoon."

"Not much of a hope, no." Deputy Glen Champion, who Metcalf had assigned to go along with the federal agents because he was not only trustworthy but had grown up tramping all over these mountains, shook his head. "This is some of the roughest terrain in the state, and most of the places are like this one was- inaccessible by anything but a heavy-duty all-terrain vehicle, on horseback, or on foot."

They had borrowed a four-wheel-drive ATV from the sheriff's department motor pool, but even it had found the narrow, rutted dirt roads a challenge, especially after the late-afternoon storm and its torrential rain.

Jaylene said, "Just getting from one spot to the next takes time. Look at the next place-am I wrong, or is it at least five miles away?"

"Five miles of a winding dirt road," Champion confirmed.

"Shit," Lucas muttered.

Jaylene glanced at the deputy, then asked her partner, "Any hunches?"

"No." Lucas was still frowning, and even in the moonlight she could tell his face was beginning to take on that drawn, exhausted look it always acquired as they got deeper and deeper into a case.

She knew better than to comment on it. "Then we move on to the next place on our list."

Champion drove, again more experienced with this type of road than either of the agents. But even with his skill, it still required nearly an hour to travel the five miles.

He parked the ATV seemingly in the middle of the road and the middle of nowhere and cut off the engine. "It's about a hundred yards farther along, just past the top of that next rise."

The area was so heavily wooded that the trees literally pressed in on them from both sides of the road, and since the leaves hadn't yet begun to drop, even the bright moonlight did little to illuminate the road ahead.

It was also very quiet.

Jaylene checked her detail list with the aid of a pencil flashlight, and said, "Okay, this property hasn't had a house on it in about fifty years. Thirty acres of mostly mountainous pastureland and a big barn is all that's left. Says here the barn's still in good shape, and it was sold to an out-of-state developer about a month ago."

"Does the developer have a name?" Lucas asked.

"Not yet. It's a holding company. Quantico's checking all this, but it'll be tomorrow at the earliest before we know any more than we do now."

They got out of the ATV, moving quietly, and kept their voices low for the same reason that Champion had turned off the police radio a good ten minutes back: because sound carried oddly up here, smothered by underbrush or trees in one spot and bouncing around madly in another.

"We'll stay together until we get the building in sight," Lucas said. "Then split up to search the area."

Jaylene checked her watch and said, "It's almost ten. As much as we'll all hate the lost time, we should definitely stick with the plan and meet back at the station for food and caffeine at midnight. Otherwise, we'll never be able to keep this up all night."

"That is the plan." Not saying whether he agreed with it-or whether he intended to have more than his customary coffee at the break-Lucas concentrated on moving as silently as possible, his gaze probing the dark road ahead of them. "The good news is, we'll be able to move faster once dawn breaks tomorrow."

"And the bad news?" Champion murmured.

"You said it yourself. Not much hope of getting through every property on our list. So we'll have to find her before we do that."

"Maybe we'll get lucky, and she'll be here or the next place we check," the deputy offered.

"I never had much faith in luck," Lucas said. "Unless I make it myself. And I like shortcuts."

"I'm game for anything you suggest," Champion said promptly. "Lindsay's a friend as well as a fellow cop." He paused, then added less certainly, "I guess you've already talked to Miss Burke."

Jaylene thought he was one of the very few around here who would refer to Samantha with so much respect, but she left it to Lucas to reply.

"That's why we're searching these properties, Deputy."

Jaylene heard the note of frustration in her partner's voice but, again, remained silent. She had picked up absolutely nothing from Samantha's belongings at the station but was nevertheless aware of much the same uneasiness he felt.

If they had not been so desperately pressed for time, she had little doubt that Lucas would be at the Carnival After Dark, doing his best to get at whatever it was that Samantha was keeping to herself.

As it was, they simply had no time for anything but the concerted search for Lindsay.

"We should be able to see the building as soon as we top this rise," Champion breathed.

He was right. As they emerged from the dense forest surrounding them, the top of the rise showed them a moonlit clearing just ahead, with a dark, hulking building at its center.

This was the third property they had checked, so their responses as a team were becoming more certain; with barely a gesture wasted between them, they split up and moved cautiously across the clearing to the barn.

After the long journey to get here, it took no more than ten minutes for them to reach the barn-and see, from the two big doors that were open and half off their hinges, that no one was being held in this derelict place.

Still, they were all cops and all thorough, so they turned on their big flashlights and began to search the interior.

"Moldy hay," Jaylene said, her voice normal now. "Rusted farm equipment. And"-she stiffened but managed not to cry out when something skittered across her foot-"and rats."

"Okay?" Lucas asked her.

"Oh, yeah. I just hate rats, is all." She continued searching the old barn.

"Judging by all this junk, the building hasn't been used for anything but storage in decades," Champion said, his flashlight directed to one wall holding a hanging collection of rather lethal-looking farm implements.

"Hold on a second." Lucas had stopped near one corner, where an old stump-years dead, but still in the ground the barn had been built around-sprouted a rusted hatchet.

Champion said, "Probably used that to slaughter livestock at one time. Chickens, at least. For Sunday dinner."

"I doubt a farmer left this," Lucas said. "Take a look." When the other two joined him, he indicated the folded piece of paper wedged in between the edge of the hatchet and the stump.

While Jaylene held her flashlight steady, Lucas produced a small tool kit and used a pair of tweezers to carefully extract the note and then unfold it on the stump. And they could all see what was block-printed on the paper.

BETTER LUCK NEXT TIME, LUKE.

Samantha wanted nothing more than to fall into bed and sleep for about twelve hours, but instead she found herself waiting in the conference room of the sheriff's department for the search teams to return to the station for a scheduled midnight break.

Nobody had offered her so much as a cup of coffee, but one deputy kept sticking his head in the doorway, clearly keeping an eye on her so she didn't disturb the stacks of foldqrs on the other end of the table or steal a pencil or something.

She thought about that as she sat and stared at the walls. It wasn't a lot of fun being an outcast.

Of course, carnies were, by definition, outcasts of a sort, since they traveled from town to town, never putting down roots and seldom building relationships outside their own close-knit groups. But since her Carnival After Dark friends were the only family Samantha had ever really known, she had never felt an outcast among them or as one of them.

Being psychic was something entirely different.

Viewed as a fraud at best and a freak at worst, Samantha had become accustomed, over the years, to scorn and disbelief. She had become accustomed to aggressive "Tell me what I'm thinking, I dare you!" in-her-face confrontations with bullies, and "routine" questioning from cops whenever there was a problem anywhere near her.

She had become accustomed to the needy, desperate people who visited her booth, with their hungry eyes and pleas for help, for the knowledge they craved. She had even become accustomed to the occasional attractive man being interested in her until, ironically, he discovered that her "act" was at least partly genuine and she was in fact psychic.

She had become accustomed. But she had never learned to like it. Any of it.

"They tell me you've been here more than an hour." Lucas came into the room, carrying two cups. He sat down on the other side of the conference table and pushed one across to her, adding, "Tea rather than coffee, right? With sugar. Sorry, there was no lemon I could find."

Samantha thought he looked very tired and more than a little grim, and even the simmering anger she felt toward him couldn't stop her from appreciating the courtesy.

He was most always courteous, Luke.

Damn him.

"Thanks." She sipped the hot tea. "I gather you guys have had no luck."

He shook his head. "No luck finding Lindsay so far. But the bastard apparently guessed where we'd look. He left a note. For me."

"What did it say?"

"Better luck next time."

Samantha winced.

"He's been more than a step ahead all along," Lucas continued. "You were obviously right about this being some kind of twisted game or contest in his mind."

"You couldn't have known that."

"I should have figured it out, and long before now."

Samantha shook her head. "I don't think he wanted you to before now. I think he was busy figuring you out, learning to understand how your mind worked, how you search for lost people."

Lucas frowned. "Are you saying he knows I'm psychic?"

From behind him in the doorway, Sheriff Metcalf said, "What? You're what?"

"Shit." Lucas couldn't help giving Samantha a look, but she was shaking her head.

"No, I didn't ambush you. He popped into that doorway like a jack-in-the-box as you were speaking. I didn't know he was out in the hall, honestly." Metcalf came into the room and moved around the table so he could see Luke's face. "You're psychic? Psychic?"

"Something like that."

"You're a federal agent."

"Yes, I am. And my psychic ability is just another tool to help me do my job, like my training, my weapon, and my proficiency with numbers and patterns."

"No patterns here," Samantha murmured, hoping to turn the focus of the discussion from the paranormal to the scientific.

"That's been one of the problems," Lucas admitted. "Nothing to latch on to, either logically or-intuitively."

"Except that now you know he's matching his wits against yours."

Lucas nodded. "Now I know. Which means I'm playing catchup. If you're right, he knows a hell of a lot more about me than I know about him."

Metcalf sat down at the table, still looking both stunned and distinctly unhappy. "No wonder you were on her side," he muttered.

"I was on her side because I know she's genuine. Not because I'm psychic too, but because I've seen her in action." Lucas turned his head and stared at the sheriff. "We can argue about this, Wyatt, or we can concentrate on finding Lindsay. Which will it be?"

"Goddammit, you know I want to find her."

"Then I suggest we put our energy and abilities into doing that, and discuss the plausibility of the paranormal later."

Metcalf nodded, however ungraciously.

Returning his gaze to Samantha, Lucas said, "I'm guessing you're here because you picked up something during a reading tonight."

"More like had something thrown at me," she said. "Guess who showed up unexpectedly at my booth? Caitlin Graham. Lindsay's sister."

"I didn't know she had a sister."

"Not local; she lives in Asheville." Shifting her gaze to the sheriff, she added coolly, "And heard about her sister's kidnapping, by the way, on the six o'clock news."

Metcalf looked stricken. "Oh, God, I should have called her."

Relenting somewhat, Samantha said, "Find Lindsay, and I'm sure all will be forgiven. Caitlin's staying at the same motel I am for the duration. She wanted to come here and wait, but I told her it'd be hard enough for one of us to run the media gauntlet outside."

"How did you manage?" Metcalf asked, curiosity overcoming hostility.

"Jedi mind control."

He blinked.

Lucas said dryly, "She's kidding. How did you get past them, Sam?"

"I had Leo create a distraction. He's good at that."

"I remember," Lucas murmured.

"Yeah. Well, anyway, he drew them away from the front door, and I slipped in. Hopefully unseen. Despite the news frenzy, I don't think the kidnapper has taken me seriously so far, and I'd just as soon keep it that way as long as possible."

"Why?" the sheriff demanded.

It was Lucas who answered. "So you can continue to be our ace in the hole."

Samantha nodded. "If he's been watching you as long as I think he has, I'm betting he's at least wondered if your ability to find people is paranormal. If he's good enough at research, I also think he may know a lot more about the SCU than Bishop would be at all comfortable with."

"Great," Lucas said.

"Wait a minute," Metcalf said. "You mean all of you, the whole unit, are-"

"Wyatt, please." Lucas was frowning at Samantha. "If you're right about all this, then he might just decide to grab a psychic of his own. To keep the playing field level."

Samantha's smile was grim. "The thought had occurred to me."