Out of the Shadows

SEVENTEEN

The back side of the storm hit Gladstone just before two in the afternoon, and as promised it was proving to be even more vicious than what had gone before. The wind howled like something tortured, and snow mixed with sleet angrily pelted the windows, so much of it falling and blowing around that there was little to see outside except white. White everywhere.

Miranda stood at her office window, looking out at all the white and trying not to worry about all the things she couldn't control, when someone knocked on her door at a little after four o'clock. "Come in," she said, almost adding his name.

Bishop came in and closed the door. "Brought you some coffee," he said, moving around the desk to hand her a cup.

She accepted it. "Thanks. You know, I'd heard about white hurricanes but never saw one until now."

Instead of going back around to a visitor's chair, Bishop remained where he was, sitting on the edge of her desk. "The weather reports say it'll be another hour before the worst of it is past. That means the cleanup starts tomorrow."

"Most of the cleanup. As soon as the snow slacks off, I'll have patrols out, and there'll be power crews and snow plows starting on the mess. With most of the town without power, that'll be our priority."

"How long will the generators last?"

"We have enough fuel for several days, so there shouldn't be a problem here. Same goes for the hospital and the clinic. School's been canceled for tomorrow, like all shifts at the paper mill, and I doubt many of the other businesses will even make an attempt to open."

Bishop watched her profile, very aware of their connection and even more conscious of the closed door shutting him off from what she was thinking. Or feeling, for that matter; whether deliberately or not, Miranda's mind and spirit were both so still and quiet that they offered him no clue to her emotions. "I talked to Alex a few minutes ago. You know he never opened the bottle of scotch?"

"I know. He's not the sort to drown his sorrows. He just keeps going blindly forward until he hits the wall."

"He's down in the basement digging through old files. Said he'd rather keep busy." Bishop paused. "But he's worse than walking wounded. I'd say that wall is close."

"Yes. I know. He was the same way when his wife died. Cancer. She was sick for months, but even with the time to prepare for the inevitable, he wasn't ready to let her go."

For just an instant, Bishop almost changed his mind, almost convinced himself that patience would be best. But remembering Alex's white face and numb expression drove him on. "I seem fated to always be advising other men to let go of the women they love."

"Is that what you told Alex? To let go?"

"No. But there've been other times. It was . . . easy advice to give. Rational, logical."

"But not welcome."

"No. Never welcome. Sometimes I think I said what I did to them only to remind myself. How impossible it is to let go. No matter how rational or logical it is. No matter how much time passes

and how empty you feel, or how much you ache alone at night. No matter how many times you tell yourself what a fool you are."

"So we're going to talk about this," she said.

"I think we'd better, don't you?"

Miranda turned from the window at last and looked at him with a faint smile. "You have a captive audience this time."

"Yes."

"I can't grab my sister and run away. This time."

Bishop barely felt the edge of the desk biting into his hands. "No," he agreed. "Do you want to?"

"Run away?" She lifted her cup in a little salute. "It didn't help before, did it? Nothing was resolved, it all just. . . stopped."

"That isn't an answer."

"It's the only one I have."

"Miranda, you knew I loved you."

"Yes. And you knew that wasn't the problem."

"Trust."

She nodded. "You wanted what we had together, the euphoria of it, the incredible exhilaration, but afterward the closeness disturbed you. The intimacy. Being so ... connected to another person. You didn't want to be known that well. You didn't want anyone to see or touch you that deeply. Not even me. So you closed the door."

"It wasn't always closed," he said roughly.

"Be honest, Bishop. It would have been closed even when we were in bed together if you could have figured out how to make that work. But you couldn't. Letting your guard down then was the price you paid for the thrill. And what do you think that was worth to me? How was I supposed to value a trust that was granted only reluctantly and when the barriers were torn down by passion? A trust you took back the instant you could."

He drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Don't damn me now for the man I was then, Miranda. I made mistakes and I made some lousy choices. But I'm not dumb enough to screw up a second chance. The door isn't closed now, not on my side."

"No," she said softly. "Now it's closed on mine. How does it feel, Bishop? To want in so badly and know you aren't welcome. To offer everything you are, and have it all thrown back in your face. How does it feel to be shut out as if you don't matter? How does it feel?"

Seth kept Bonnie in sight almost every moment as the day wore on, just as he'd promised. He helped her entertain the two young patients she had made her personal responsibility, and when they settled down for afternoon naps just before the storm intensified, went with her to one of the supply rooms to hunt for a few different games they could offer the girls later in the afternoon.

"It's going to be a long day," he warned.

"Yes. But at least we have things to do, keeping Christy and Jordan occupied." She sent him a quick smile. "If you can stand it, that is."

"I'm fine. I like girls."

"I know, and I should probably be worried about that."

"Not like them that way, Bonnie. Not the way I—" He saw her smile again, and added ruefully, "I walked right into that one, didn't I?"

"You're easy," she agreed.

He had to laugh, but sobered when he found a Ouija board on a high shelf. "Hey, here's another one of these things. I had no idea they were so popular."

Bonnie looked at the box, then at Seth. Her face was grave now. "It's just another game, at least to most people."

"But not to you."

"Not to me. We haven't really talked about that part of things." She looked at the checkers game in her hands with a faint frown.

"We have time," Seth reminded her. "I mean, just knowing that my girlfriend can communicate with dead people . . . well, that's a lot to — take in."

"You mean believe."

Seth hesitated, then shrugged. "I don't know, Bonnie. I guess I'd be quicker to believe you'd read the killer's mind to find out where Steve's body was. Maybe that is what I believe, since he was right where that damned board said he'd be. But the other options . . . Talking to the dead? Ghosts? I just don't know how I feel about that."

Bonnie summoned a smile. "Well, like you said, we have time."

Sensing that he'd upset her, Seth put the Ouija board back on its shelf and took her hand. "In case you're wondering about it, it'd take more than finding out you can read minds or talk to ghosts to get rid of me. I told you when we were kids that I was in this for life."

"Yes — but that's a promise I won't hold you to." Her voice was steady. "There are a lot more . . . complications . . . than you realize, Seth. It won't be easy, hitching your fate to mine."

"Who wants easy?" He lifted her hand and kissed it in a rare, graceful gesture. "I just want you. We'll be fine, Bonnie, I keep telling you. More than fine. We'll be great together."

Her smile this time was slow, and caught at his breath and his heart as always. "I know. I know we will."

"Good. Now — why don't we take these games back to the girls' room so they're handy when we need them?"

She nodded, and a minute later they were back out in the hall. But Seth had barely closed the door of the storage room behind them when they heard a muffled thud from inside.

Seth opened the door cautiously, peered inside, then relaxed with a laugh. "One of the games fell. I guess I didn't put it all the way back on the shelf or something. Or maybe the damned things are just haunted."

His tone had been light, but Bonnie frowned. "The Ouija board?"

"Yeah." He went back inside the room to replace the game on its shelf.

Bonnie was on the point of warning him that occurrences like this were rarely as innocent as they seemed, but in the end decided to say nothing. Seth had enough to consider.

But it bothered her. And she put a bit more effort into maintaining her shield, all the same.

Once, Bishop would have listened only to the words expressly designed to wound, and they would have cut him to the bone. He would have believed what she wanted him to believe, and responded in anger, retreating just as she had behind a closed door so that no communication at all could exist between them.

Once.

Her words still cut, but he could sense something else in her, pain or reluctance, even grief. Almost hidden from him in the stillness of her mind, but there and very real. Hardly the emotions of a woman wronged and hell-bent on revenge. And he was no longer that arrogant young man, careless of what he'd understood too late was precious to him. All of it — the hard lessons he had learned then and since then, the long, lonely years without her, his sheer determination, training and experience — combined now to focus his mind on solving a puzzle.

"Revenge, Miranda?" He spoke slowly, thoughtfully.

"Call it what you like."

"Vengefulness isn't part of your nature."

"Don't be too sure of that."

"But I am sure. I'm positive."

"Don't profile me, Bishop."

He smiled. "Why not? It's what I do. So let me tell you what I think about someone who was born Miranda Elaine Daultry. I think that in most ways you're a very direct woman, Miranda. You say what you mean, and when there's a choice you'll always pick the most immediate and straightforward manner of handling a problem — whether or not it's the simplest. You don't postpone unpleasant chores as a rule, preferring to do what has to be done and put it behind you."

"What makes you think it's unpleasant?" she challenged. "They say revenge is sweet."

"Only to a vindictive nature. But there isn't a cruel or hurtful bone in your body. So if you had intended to get even, to strike back at me for how I treated you eight years ago, we'd be long past that by now. You would have gotten it over with in the first ten minutes."

"Maybe I wanted the punishment to fit the crime."

Slowly, still feeling his way through the intuitive process of understanding a unique personality, he said, "No, that's not you. You don't brood about things, don't let them prey on you. My guess would be that once you walked out of my life, everything you felt about me and what had happened was put aside while you got on with the necessary business of building a new life for you and Bonnie."

She was silent, but a flicker in her eyes told him he had scored a hit.

He said, "You tend to count pain as a lesson learned — and move on. Deliberately setting out to hurt someone else is completely alien to you. No, Miranda, you'll never convince me that getting even was ever part of the plan. Not then and not now."

"Never thought I'd have the opportunity," she said. "But once you showed up, well — how could I resist? I'm adaptable, Bishop. I revise my plans when necessary."

He shook his head. "No matter how much of an idiot I was, you valued what we had together. You knew how rare it was, how fragile. And to use your own definition — how intimate. No way would you have opened yourself up to that again just to punish me."

Miranda was silent.

"And there's one final thing," he said. "One thing I know absolutely about you. You don't stop loving someone because they hurt you or disappoint you, not you, Miranda. It's not in your nature. You're still in love with me."

Tony watched the fax begin to come through, and said into the phone, "You guys were fast."

Dryly, Sharon Edwards said, "An autopsy isn't exactly something you want to linger over."

"Guess not. And I also guess you're stuck at the hospital until the storm's over."

"There are worse places to be snowbound."

"If you say so. Just for the record, the cots here are so uncomfortable, I'm actually missing my bed at the Bluebird Lodge. And you know how I feel about that bed."

"Things could be a lot worse."

"Oh, yeah? How?"

"The generator could go. And then you'd be cold and in the dark. It's all a matter of perspective, Tony."

"Yeah, I guess." He glanced at the small TV, which was currently showing a South American beauty pageant whenever the satellite signal could get through the whiteout, and grinned.

"I promised Miranda we'd report in as soon as we finished the post, so make sure she sees it ASAP," Sharon said.

"Anything we didn't already know?" Tony asked, making an effort to be professional while keeping one eye on the swimsuit competition.

"Not really."

"Then I won't disturb her just now."

"Why? Is something going on?"

"Well, let's put it this way. Bishop is in her office, the door is closed — and his transmitter is working at full strength."

"Tension?"

"Oh, boy. He prowled around in here for more than an hour, until it became obvious that Miranda was not coming out of her office. I don't know what's going on, what it was about Liz Hallowell's murder that made Miranda close herself off again, but he's flat-out determined to fix the problem."

"Some problems," Sharon noted, "can't be fixed."

"Don't try to tell Bishop that. I ventured a mild warning, and he nearly took my head off." Tony sighed, and began looking over the faxed autopsy report. "It's probably a good thing that we're all stuck inside until the storm passes. With nothing much else to do, at least they can get things sorted out between them."

"You mean they can try."

"Yeah. They can try."

"You son of a bitch." Miranda spoke quietly.

"Maybe. But I'm right, at least about this." There was no triumph in his voice, just certainty. "Christ, Miranda, you think I don't know you never would have let me get so close again if it wasn't true?"

She looked at the cup in her hand as if it were something alien to her understanding, then frowned and set it on the window ledge. "I always said you were a bright guy."

As badly as he wanted to, Bishop didn't move toward her. "You know something is going to happen, don't you? To one of us. It's what you saw in the beginning, the vision you've managed to hide from me. That's why you closed the link." He forced himself to let go of the edge of the desk, absently flexing his stiff fingers. "But which one of us are you trying to protect, Miranda? You? Or me?"

"A very bright guy," she murmured. Her face was still, those startling blue eyes fixed on him unwaveringly.

"What did you see? Tell me."

"You tell me something, Bishop. When you finally caught up with Lewis Harrison, was it the vision we both saw?"

He nodded. "A few minor details were different, but otherwise yes."

"Yeah, I thought so. No matter what we do or try to do, no matter how we try to change the outcome, it almost never works."

"What do you mean?"

"Our own actions create the future, even if we're given a glimpse ahead of time. You saw yourself catching up to Harrison, and you made it happen. I saw us become lovers again, and in trying to shut you out to stop it from happening, I created the very situation I was trying to avoid."

"You risked your life to try to shut me out." He had to say it.

"No. I told you I could handle the energy buildup."

"We both know it wasn't as simple as that. You could have destroyed yourself, Miranda. If that desperate spirit hadn't taken the decision out of your hands by attacking you, how long would you have let it go on? The pain, shutting off your extra senses, losing all your defenses. Sooner or later it could have killed you — or caused you to be killed."

Miranda shook her head slightly, more in resistance than disagreement, but she didn't protest aloud.

"Was it worth that to you?" It was something else he had to say, to ask. "Would you have rather died than let me get close again?"

"When it started ... I thought so."

Bishop thought he probably deserved the jolt of pain he felt, but that didn't make it any easier to take. "I see."

Her smile was rueful. "I was angry, Bishop, even after all those years. Not because of what happened with my family. Bonnie was right, I never really blamed you for that. You were doing your job, doing everything in your power to stop a vicious killer. But I did blame you for ... leaving me alone to cope with the aftermath."

"Miranda — "

"Oh, I know. I was the one who left in a physical sense. But I wouldn't have done that if you hadn't already drawn away."

"I felt guilty as hell, first about going behind your back to Kara and then about what happened to her and your parents."

"And you didn't want to feel my pain and guilt added to your own. I knew that. But it didn't help. You closed yourself off from me just when I needed you most."

Bishop wanted to tell her he was sorry. But what words were there to apologize for turning away from the woman he loved and allowing her to suffer alone and rebuild her life without his help or comfort? What possible words could he offer now?

Miranda didn't appear to expect any, and went on in a matter-of-fact tone. "So, yes, I would have done just about anything to shut you out when you came back into my life. Even though I knew it was inevitable we'd be lovers again."

She drew a breath and let it out slowly. "I saw a series of events culminating in something else I wanted to avoid, but it's all happening. Every action I take, every choice and decision I make, just brings me closer to that future I saw. It's unavoidable."

"What future, Miranda? What did you see?"

"What's the use of knowing? You can't change it."

"Goddammit, tell me."

She left the window finally, crossing the space between them to stand almost between his knees. She lifted her hands and touched him, and with that contact the door that had shut him out quietly opened. "I die," Miranda said steadily. "I'm the killer's final victim."

As it turned out, the roaring storm made the little girls too jittery to be much interested in games, so Bonnie and Seth made a quick trip to the clinic's video library and returned with several tapes. It took only a few minutes to get the girls settled with snacks and the video they had chosen.

Under his breath, Seth murmured, "We don't have to sit and watch this, do we? I hate it when Bambi's mother — "

Bonnie made a hasty gesture to silence him, then drew him away from the two absorbed girls to the small seating area near the door. "I'd rather not leave them alone with the storm so wild," she said, "but we don't have to watch the movie."

"In that case, I'm glad we got the games. What do you feel like?" He bent down to sort through the boxes stacked on the coffee table. "Trivial Pursuit? Clue? I don't think we want Candyland, but what about Mah-Jongg? Or here's one with chess and checkers and — Hey. I must have grabbed this one by mistake when I went in to put it back on the shelf."

Bonnie stared at the Ouija board in his hand. "Did you?"

"I guess so."

"Seth ... do you mind taking it back to the storage room?"

He looked at her gravely. "I wasn't going to suggest—"

"I know. I'd just feel more . . . comfortable if that board was somewhere else."

"But—"

"It's a doorway, Seth. I just don't want to be even unconsciously tempted to open it again, that's all."

"Would you be? Tempted, I mean."

"Yes. Because if that was Lynet we reached before, she might be able to tell us who her killer was. That answer would be worth opening the door — if I was sure I could control it afterward. But I'm not sure. I don't have enough experience to be sure."

"You opened it once before," Seth said, slowly enough to make his own doubts about the reality of that obvious.

"Yes. But Randy reminded me of just how dangerous it is to do that, and I promised her I wouldn't try again."

Seth opened his mouth, then closed it, hesitated, and shrugged. "Sure, I'll put it back."

"Thanks."

"Don't go anywhere while I'm gone."

Bonnie smiled. "No, I won't. I'll set up one of the other games so we can play."

"Good enough." Seth didn't exactly hurry as he left the room, but he didn't dawdle either. He strode down the hall to the storage room, and was careful to put the Ouija board on the highest shelf and shove it far back, so that no part of it hung out over the edge.

He came out and shut the door, absently jiggling the knob to be sure it was firmly closed. It was only when he took a step away that he heard it again.

The whispering.

Seth eased back to the door and pressed his ear against it, listening. He could hear it clearly, a muffled rustling sound that was like a voice or voices whispering rapidly, almost rhythmically.

It made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

Seth hesitated, then reached for the knob and turned it slowly. The whispering continued. He jerked the door open.

Silence.

And a perfectly ordinary storage room, the Ouija board high on its shelf just as Seth had left it.

He waited a moment, heard nothing but the muted sounds of the storm, and closed the door. Still nothing. Whatever had made the whispering noise was silent now.

"Daniels, you're really losing it," he told himself out loud. But when he went back to Bonnie, he hurried..