Sense Of Evil

13

ALYSSA TAYLOR KNEW damned well there was no good reason for her to hang around near the police station on a Sunday morning. No casual or innocent reason, that is. She couldn’t even pretend to sit nonchalantly in the coffee shop near the station, since it wouldn’t open until church let out.

She had toyed with the idea of going to church, but Ally found she couldn’t be quite that hypocritical.

She also half-seriously feared being struck by lightning if she crossed the threshold.

“You’re lurking, too, huh?” Paige Gilbert, who Ally knew was a local reporter for the town’s most popular radio station, leaned against the other side of the old-fashioned, wrought-iron light post, as seemingly casual as Ally.

“I bet we look like a couple of hookers,” Ally said.

Paige eyed Ally’s very short skirt and filmy top, then glanced down at her own jeans and T-shirt, and said, “Well…”

“Catch more flies with honey,” Ally said.

“I’ll just watch them flit past, thanks.”

Ally chuckled. “Travis likes my legs. And it’s such a little thing to make him happy.”

“A very little thing,” Paige murmured. “How’s the pillow talk?”

“I don’t kiss and tell.”

“Except on the air?”

“Well, we all have our boundaries, don’t we?”

Paige half laughed and inclined her head slightly in a sort of salute. “You’re good, I’ll give you that much.”

“I usually get what I go after.”

“Didn’t Cheryl Bayne say something like that?”

“She wasn’t careful. Obviously. I am.”

“Speculation seems to be she stuck her nose in where it didn’t belong.”

“Occupational hazard.”

“For us too.”

Ally shrugged. “My philosophy is, no sense being in the game unless you’re willing to play all-out. I am. Like I said, I usually get what I go after.”

“You get any news on the body they found yesterday?”

Ally’s internal debate was swift and silent. “Not a blonde and not a victim of our serial killer. The theory is, she died by accident.”

“And hung her own body in that old gas station?”

“No, our resident ghoul probably did that. A nice toy for him, already dead and everything.”

“Yuck.”

“Well, we knew he was sick and twisted. Now we know he’s an opportunist too.”

Paige frowned. “If she wasn’t one of his victims, how did he get his hands on her?”

“The mystery of the thing. I’m going to go out on a limb and say she had a connection to either him or one of the victims.”

“What kind of connection?”

“Dunno. Friend, family, a lover in common-something. She died by accident, he saw or knew and took advantage of the situation.”

Paige was still frowning. “There’s got to be more to it. How, exactly, did she die?”

“That I don’t know. Yet.”

“Is it true she’d been dead a couple of months?”

“About that.”

“Then she died before the first victim did. Maybe he liked playing with a dead body so much he decided to make a few of his very own?”

“Maybe.”

They stood on either side of the lamppost, leaning against it, and gazed across the street at the town hall. The downtown area was practically deserted. It was very quiet.

“I sort of wish I’d gone to church,” Paige said finally.

“Yeah,” Ally said. “Me too.”

Rafe wore his weapon in a hip holster, with the flap fastened; there was no way he could get to it; Hollis, like Isabel, wore her holster at the small of her back, also out of reach. Both she and Rafe stood frozen, their hands a little above waist height with the palms out, by training and instinct showing this dangerously unstable opponent the least threatening posture possible as his gun wavered between them.

“Tim, settle down,” Rafe advised calmly.

“Rose said she’d had enough,” Helton said, his voice as shaky as his gun hand. “That’s it, that’s why you’re here. She told you. She come and told you, and now you’ve brought the feds out here.”

From her angle, Hollis caught only a glimpse of what she knew Rafe could see more clearly: Isabel, at the rear bumper of the hay truck. Like the other two, she had frozen the moment the doors had burst open, but unlike them, she wasn’t visible to Tim Helton.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t visible to her either, since the heavy barn door shielded him from her view.

Worse, she was standing knee-deep in brittle, noisy hay; any movement at all would draw his attention and take away whatever hope she had of surprising him.

Standing still, Isabel silently drew her weapon and held it in a practiced, two-handed grip, thumbing off the safety.

Then she looked toward Rafe and Hollis, brows lifting in a silent question.

“Tim, we haven’t heard from Rose,” Rafe was saying, still calm. He kept his gaze fixed on Helton, though he could see Isabel from the corner of his eye. “That’s why we’re here, to look for her.”

“Liar. I heard them talking out here a while ago-they’re feds. Both of ’em. You bring feds out here and think I don’t know why? What am I, stupid? Where’s the other one? You tell her to come out, Sullivan, and I mean quick. You know I ain’t afraid to use this gun.”

“Tim, listen,” Rafe said. “Aspice super caput suum.”

Helton blinked in confusion. “Huh? What’d you-”

The crack of Isabel’s pistol was loud, but before Helton could do more than twitch in surprise, the hay bale that had been hanging several feet above his head crashed down, knocking him to the ground-and out cold.

Rafe immediately moved forward to get the unconscious man’s pistol, calling out, “Got him, Isabel. Nice shot.”

She came around the barn door even as he finished speaking, crunching through the hay, pistol lowered but ready, and said, “Dead-eye Jane, that’s me.”

Hollis was staring up at the loft door and the winch designed to lift heavy bales of hay inside the building. “I’ll be damned. With the barn painted that wheat color, I didn’t even notice that up there.”

“Neither did I,” Isabel said. “Good thing Rafe did. I gather all this was about moonshine, of all the ridiculous things?”

Rafe nodded. “He’s got a still in there. You can smell the stuff. Or, at least, Hollis could. I didn’t notice when we got here, unfortunately.”

“Easy to smell now. On him. He reeks.”

“Yeah, he’s drunk. Probably since he noticed his wife was missing, and possibly what drove her to leave him. I don’t know how long he’s been selling bootleg whiskey, but it’s obvious he’s been drinking and otherwise using it for years.”

“Mallory’s tractor story,” Isabel said, realizing. “He blew up his own tractor using moonshine instead of fuel.”

“Right. I really should have remembered that before bringing two feds out here. With that level of paranoia and the amount of raw alcohol in him, he could have shot all three of us and not felt a twinge of regret about it until he sobered up.”

“I’m confused,” Hollis said. “What did you say to him?”

“Not to him. I told Isabel to look above his head. I knew the only clear shot she had was the winch or rope.”

“Nice you trusted me to hit either one,” Isabel said, then frowned at him. “But how in hell did you know I’d understand classical Latin? I didn’t tell you that.”

“No, Hollis did, sort of in passing. I remembered because it so happens that I took it in college as well.” He sent a sidelong glance at Hollis. “A fairly nerdy thing to do, I admit, but it has been useful here and there.”

“Especially here,” Isabel said. “Another few seconds, and this lunatic would have shot one of you. Probably killed you.”

Hollis uttered a shaken laugh and, when the other two looked at her inquiringly, said, “Okay, now I’m a believer.”

It was nearly five that afternoon when Rafe came into the conference room and found Isabel, for the first time that day, alone. He closed the door behind him.

Sitting on the table studying autopsy photos of the woman found hanging in the old gas station, she said, “Please tell me we finally have an I.D. on her.”

“Word just came in from Quantico. They think her name is Hope Tessneer. Age thirty-five, divorced, no children. The dental records are a close, but not exact, match. The record we gave them for comparison is at least ten years old.”

“So there’s a good chance it’s her.”

“A very good chance. Mallory’s talking to the sheriff’s department in Pearson now. That’s another small town about thirty miles from here. We’ll know more when they give us all the information they have, and when they talk to her family and friends. We do know that Hope Tessneer worked as a real-estate agent.”

Isabel looked at him, frowning. “A possible connection with Jamie. How they met, maybe.”

“Could be. She’s been missing almost exactly eight weeks, according to her boss. He wasn’t all that worried, because she had taken off without warning or explanation at least twice in recent years. Said she wouldn’t have come home to a job either time except that she was the best sales associate he had.”

“Then she knew how to please people, how to give them what they wanted. That fits.”

“For a submissive, you mean.”

“Yeah. And a good fit for Jamie. Somebody like that might have been a longtime partner. Someone who wasn’t just submissive but really trusted Jamie. It could help explain the lack of defensive wounds.”

“That’s what I thought.”

Still frowning, Isabel said, “I wish we could find that damned box of photos.”

“We can’t even check for more safe-deposit boxes in the other banks in the area until tomorrow morning.”

“I know, I know. I just think it’s important. We need to see what’s in that box.”

“Agreed.” Very deliberately, Rafe took a chair on the side of the table where she was sitting. “On another subject…”

Her frown vanished, and she smiled. “Where the hell am I, and how do I get to Detroit?”

He smiled slightly in response. “Are you a Richard Pryor fan, or do you just know that I am?”

“Both.”

“Any more one-liners you want to throw at me?”

“No. I’ll be good.”

“Just tell me what’s going on, Isabel.”

She closed the autopsy file and set it aside, then drew a breath and let it out slowly. “The short, perfectly truthful version is, I don’t know what’s going on.”

“And the long version?”

“I’m not picking up anything from anyone. I don’t hear any voices. All my extra senses closed up shop last night, and I think it has something to do with you. And I don’t know what the hell is going on.”

5:10 PM

Mallory hung up the phone and rubbed the back of her neck as she looked at Hollis, who was perched on the corner of her desk. “They’ll get back to us once they’ve interviewed Hope Tessneer’s family and friends. But just from the information they already had on her bank accounts, it looks like she’d been paying for something about twice a month for the last year or so. Checks made out to cash, and cashed by her.”

“For how much?”

“Always the same amount. Fifteen hundred.”

Hollis raised her eyebrows. “I guess Jamie’s services didn’t come cheap.”

“I guess not. If we’re right about all this, that’s an extra three grand in undeclared cash Jamie was pulling in per month-and from just one client. Who knows how many regulars she had?”

“Where the hell did she hide all that money?”

“There has to be another bank. No unexplained deposits show up in any of the accounts she kept at two banks here in Hastings. Her salary, declared income from real estate and other investments-all documented, everything on the up-and-up. The public part of her life was squeaky clean.”

“And the secret part was buried deep.”

“I’ll say. Buried deep and probably under an alias, at least financially; it’s obvious she’s been hiding at least some of her financial dealings for a long time, maybe years. Hell, her other bank or banks could be out of state. Or out of the country.”

“If so, we may never find them. We’ve got people set to start checking out all the other area banks tomorrow, right?”

“Yeah. With pictures of Jamie and the information that she could have been disguised and using an alias.”

“And it seemed like such a nice little town,” Hollis said.

Mallory leaned back in her chair with a sigh. “I always thought so.”

“You grew up here, I think you said.”

“Yeah. Well, from the time I was about thirteen. Both my parents and a brother still live in the area. I thought about leaving when I was in college, but… I like it here. Or did. Never knew how many people kept nasty secrets until I became a cop.”

“It’s been an eye-opener for me too,” Hollis confessed. “Still, this sort of thing has got to be unusual for small towns. I mean, a dominatrix practicing her… art… for paying clients, while also working as a top real-estate agent?”

“If it’s not unusual, I’m moving.”

“I don’t blame you a bit for that.”

“You know, she picked a good public job to hide a private second one,” Mallory mused. “Real-estate agents often keep erratic hours, so nobody would question if she wasn’t in the office at any given time. She could probably meet clients day or night, accommodate their schedules easily.”

“And since she was the dominant,” Hollis said, “she could probably take on as many clients as her energy allowed. No need to take a day or week off now and again to allow those ugly bruises and burns to heal. Or whatever else there might be. She’d be the one dealing out the punishment. Jesus.”

Hearing the distaste in the other woman’s voice, Mallory grimaced in agreement. “A very twisted way to find pleasure, if you ask me.”

Ginny joined them in time to get the gist of the conversation, saying, “The things people get up to behind closed doors. We’ve found Rose Helton.”

“Alive and well, I gather?” Mallory said.

“Definitely alive. I’d say pissed rather than well. When I told her that her husband was sleeping it off in a cell after having waved his gun around at the chief and two federal agents, she said she hoped the judge would throw away the key.”

“Where is she?” Hollis asked.

“In Charleston, with a college friend.”

“She went to college?” Mallory asked in surprise. “And still married Tim Helton?”

Pronouncing the words carefully, Ginny said, “She said it had been a cosmic karmic mistake. And that she’d already filed for divorce and wasn’t coming back here. And, oh, by the way, in case we hadn’t found it, there was also a still in an old shed in the back pasture.”

“We found it,” Hollis murmured.

“Everybody said they were so happy.” Mallory shook her head. “Christ, you really don’t know about people.”

Hollis said, “Well, anyway, we can cross her off the missing list.”

“One less to worry about,” Ginny agreed.

“How’s the rest of the list coming?” Mallory asked her.

“No change. No sign of Cheryl Bayne. Plus, we still have several women missing in the general area, and nothing new on Kate Murphy.” Ginny sighed, clearly weary. “It’s like she disappeared into thin air. She fits right in with the other victims too.”

“But not Cheryl Bayne.”

Hollis said, “I think Isabel’s probably right about Cheryl. If the killer got her, it wasn’t specifically because she was-is-a reporter, but because she somehow got too close. Or he was afraid she had. And if so, it’s only going to get more difficult to even try to predict what he might do next.”

“Except kill,” Mallory offered wryly.

It was Hollis’s turn to rub the back of her neck. “And there’s something else. Isabel’s the profiler, but I’ve got to say, if Kate Murphy is a victim, why haven’t we found her? So far, the rule’s been that if he kills them, he does it quick and leaves them out in the open where they’re easily found. Assuming he has killed again, or that he has Kate Murphy, why would he change his M.O. now?”

“Our patrols are checking out every highway rest stop,” Ginny said. “Most of them two or three times a day.”

“Maybe we’ve spooked him,” Mallory suggested. “He could be killing and leaving the bodies in places we aren’t keeping under observation.”

Hollis glanced toward the closed door of the conference room. “Maybe it’s time we discussed that possibility.”

Mallory didn’t move. “Rafe had a sort of determined look on his face when he closed the door. I’m not so sure I want to be the one to disturb them.”

Hollis continued to look at the door intently, focusing, tentatively trying out the spider sense. After a long moment, she said, “Um… let’s give them a few more minutes.”

“You’re serious?” Rafe leaned forward and touched her hand, not even reacting now to the spark.

Isabel looked down at their hands for a moment, then back at his face. “Entirely serious. For the first time in more than fourteen years, there’s silence in my head.”

“That’s what’s been wrong all day.”

“That’s it,” she said, unsurprised that he had noticed. “The question is: why?”

They both looked down at their touching hands, and Rafe said, “Frontier territory, huh?”

“Yeah. Scary, isn’t it?”

“Today, looking at the wrong end of a gun being waved around by a paranoid drunk, was scary. This? This is just a very interesting turn my life has taken.”

“You’re a very unusual man,” she said.

“Which is probably a good thing,” he said, “considering that you’re a very unusual woman.”

There was a part of Isabel that wanted to shy away, to pretend he hadn’t said that or that she hadn’t understood what he meant. But Isabel didn’t let herself shy away, or draw away, or back away. Whatever this was, it was something she had to deal with.

“Rafe, do you realize what this could mean?”

“Static electricity is more important than I thought it was?”

“Electromagnetic energy. And, no, not that.”

“Then I don’t have a clue what this could mean. Or even what this is.”

“Hollis and I have a theory.”

“Which is?”

“The theory is, my abilities are still with me, it’s just that now there’s something standing between me and the great wide world out there.”

“You’re not saying-”

“We think it might be you.”

“You are saying.” He frowned at her. “Isabel, how could it be me? I’m not psychic. I wouldn’t even know how to be psychic.”

“We think that might be the problem.”

Rafe waited, brows raised.

“When a latent first becomes a functional psychic, there’s an adjustment period. The psychic isn’t in control of his or her abilities from the get-go. I mean-look at Hollis. She’s been a medium for months and still can’t open and close that door at will. It takes concentration, and focus, and practice. A lot of practice.”

“I’m not psychic.” He said it with more wariness than uncertainty.

“Your grandmother was.”

“So?”

“So sometimes it runs in families. Your chances of being a latent psychic are much higher than average.”

“I still don’t-”

“Look. There was a connection between us from the beginning. Call it an attraction, a sense of understanding, simpatico, whatever. It was there. We both felt it.”

“I felt that, yes.”

“We feel it now,” she said, admitting it.

Rafe nodded immediately. “We feel it now.”

“And there’s the sparking thing. I told you that was something new for me.”

“Electromagnetic energy fields. Basic science.”

“Yeah, but the way those fields were reacting to each other and the strength of that reaction was something different. Something that might have affected my abilities.”

“Okay. But-”

“Rafe. There was this connection, this… conduit between you and me. Maybe the energy opened it, or maybe… Maybe the energy opened it. And then when I told you about what had happened to me, you reached out. Through the conduit. You wanted the pain to go away. And it did.”

Rafe spoke very carefully. “How could I have done anything to… put your abilities in a box?”

“Actually, that’s a very good description,” she noted.

“Isabel.”

“Okay. One of the things we’ve discovered is that the subconscious is often more in control of our abilities than the conscious mind is, especially in a newly functional psychic. One theory is that it’s because these are very old abilities-not new ones. They were born out of instinct, when primitive humans needed every possible edge just to survive.”

“Makes sense,” Rafe said.

“Yes, it does. And if you subscribe to that theory, it also makes sense that our subconscious minds-the deeply buried, primitive id-would not only be able to master psychic abilities but would do so immediately and skillfully. To that part of us, being psychic would be perfectly natural.”

“My id put your abilities in a box?”

Thoughtfully, Isabel said, “Has it occurred to you that we have very strange conversations?”

“Constantly. Answer my question.”

“Yes. More or less. Rafe, your nature is very protective, and even though you like and respect strong women and are perfectly able to work alongside us on equal terms, deep down inside, you will always want to protect anyone you… care about. That is your instinctive response.”

“Anyone I care about.”

“Yes. And, obviously, the more you care, the more… passionate… your feelings are, the stronger your protective instincts will be.”

His mouth twisted slightly. “Want to stop tiptoeing around that part of it and just say it?”

“Do I have to?”

“We might as well get it out into the open. This is happening because I’m falling in love with you.”

Isabel had to clear her throat before she could say, “With or without my extra senses, you keep surprising me. That is very disconcerting.”

“What would you have said? That I had a crush on you?”

“Well…”

Dryly, he said, “We’re talking about my feelings here, Isabel, not yours. I am not trying to corner you, not even asking how you feel about me. So you can stop backpedaling.”

“I was not-”

“But I’m guessing honesty on my part is important right now, since I may be-unconsciously-affecting your abilities. Yes or no?”

She cleared her throat again. “Yes. We think so.”

“Okay. So despite the reasonable and logical certainty of my conscious mind that you can take care of yourself, and today’s ample demonstration that you can also take care of me if the occasion demands, my subconscious thinks you need a shield.”

“Apparently.”

“And gave you one.”

“That’s the theory.”

“How?”

“That part’s a little fuzzy.”

“Meaning?”

“We haven’t got a clue.”

“Shit.”

Isabel had to laugh at his expression, even if the sound held virtually no humor. “Frontier territory, remember? We don’t know how it happened, I don’t know how it happened, but it’s the only thing that makes sense. I’ll tell you now, if we both survive this, Bishop is going to want to study us. Because as far as I know, this has never happened before.”

“Never mind Bishop. What do we do about this? You need your abilities, Isabel. Hell, I need your abilities. If we don’t stop this bastard, he’ll murder at least three more women. And you’re on his list.”

“A fact that makes me far more uneasy today than it did yesterday.”

“Because yesterday you had an edge none of the other women did. You believed you’d see him coming,” Rafe said.

It’s time.

He tried to ignore the voice this time, because there were people around. People who’d hear.

Wimp. You really aren’t a man, are you? You’re worse than a neutered dog, following them around, sniffing at them, unable to do anything else. That’s it, isn’t it? No balls.

His head hurt. The voice echoed inside, bouncing off his skull until he wanted to pound it against a wall.

You know who they are now. The three that matter. You know them.

Yes, he knew them. He knew all of them.

And you know they’ll tell.

“But not yet,” he whispered, fearful of being overheard. “They won’t tell yet.”

That agent will. That reporter will. And the other one, she’ll tell too.

He didn’t say it out loud, because he knew people would hear, but it was the other one that worried him most. The other one wouldn’t just tell.

She’d show.

She’d show it all.

Isabel nodded slowly. “Even though twice before in my life I’ve been blindsided by evil, I believed I’d see it this time. I believed that this time… I’d fight it face-to-face. For some reason, I was sure even before I got here that that’s how it would end.” She hesitated, then said, “I need to do that, you know.”

“Yes. I know.”

Isabel was very much afraid he did know. Almost unconsciously, she drew her hand away from his and leaned back a bit, crossing her arms beneath her breasts. “So we need to figure out how to undo this,” she said. “How to take away the box, or at least punch a hole or two in it so I can reach out and use my abilities.”

After a moment, Rafe leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers together over his middle. “Whether you’re right about it or not, the only thing I know about psychic abilities is what you and Hollis have told me. So all I can contribute is willingness to try… whatever you think I should try.”

She nodded, but said, “Before we try anything, we need to be sure. Sure that psychic ability has been triggered in you and you’re a functional psychic.”

“I’m beginning to have fewer doubts about that.”

“Oh? Why?”

“Because as soon as we stopped touching, your voice became a little muffled.”

“As if there’s… something between us.”

Rafe nodded.

“Psychic cotton wool,” Isabel said. “That’s what Hollis called it.”

He looked at her in silence for a moment, then shook his head slightly. “Brave new world. Not something I expected to be part of.”

“No. Me either.” Before he could say anything to that, she added, “Anyway, we need to know for sure.”

“How can we find out?”

Very casually, Isabel said, “It just so happens that there’s a telepath in town. A telepath with the ability to recognize another psychic at least eighty percent of the time. That’s the highest percentage we’ve ever found.”

“A telepath,” Rafe said. “SCU?”

“Yes.”

“Undercover, I gather.”

“Bishop often sends in a secondary agent or team to work behind the scenes whenever possible. We’ve found it a very effective method of operation.” Her tone was a little wary now, and she watched him uncertainly.

“Waiting for me to blow my stack?” he asked.

“Well, law-enforcement officials we work with tend to get a little upset when they find out they’ve been left out of the loop. Even for a very good reason. So, let’s just say it wouldn’t surprise me if you did.”

“Then,” Rafe said, “your senses really are in a box. And I’m not just talking about the extra ones.” His voice was very calm, almost offhand. He got to his feet. “When do I meet this telepath?”

Isabel checked her watch. “Forty-five minutes. We’ll have to leave in thirty to make the meeting.”

“Okay. I’ll be in my office until then.”

She watched him leave the room and continued to gaze at the open doorway until Hollis appeared just a minute or two later.

“Isabel?”

“The thing that actually scares me,” Isabel said as though they were continuing a conversation begun sometime before, “is that I have this uneasy feeling he’s at least three steps ahead of me. And I don’t understand how he’s doing that.”

“The killer?”

“No. Rafe.”

Hollis closed the door behind her, then came in and sat down at the conference table. “He’s still surprising you, huh?”

“In spades. He just never reacts to things the way I think he’s going to.”

Mildly, Hollis said, “Then maybe you’re thinking too much.”

“What do you mean?”

“Stop trying to anticipate, Isabel. Instead of thinking about everything, why not try listening to your instincts and feelings?”

“You sound like Bishop.”

Hollis was a little surprised. “I do?”

“Yes. He says I only get blindsided when I forget what my senses are for. That I have to accept and understand that what I feel is at least as important as what I think.”

“More important,” Hollis said. “For you. Especially now, I imagine.”

“Why now?”

“Rafe.”

Isabel frowned and looked away.

“He reached out to you, Isabel. You wanted him to. You let him. But you couldn’t reach back. You weren’t quite ready to take that chance.”

“I’ve known the man a grand total of about four days.”

“So? We both know time has nothing to do with it. You and Rafe connected in those first few hours. You were wide open because you always are-or were. He was definitely attracted and unusually willing to open himself emotionally, or so it seemed to me. Jesus Christ, Isabel, you two strike sparks when you touch. Literally. Are you telling me you can’t see a sign from the universe that clear?”

“We’re going over old ground here,” Isabel said tightly.

“Yes, but you keep missing the point.”

“And what is that?”

“Those control issues of yours. You can be flip about them if you want, but we both know they’re at the heart of this entire situation.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. You came into this as confident as always, sure of yourself and your abilities. In control. I don’t know, maybe you were a little more vulnerable than usual because it’s this particular killer, this old enemy, that you were after. Or maybe that had nothing to do with it. Maybe it was just a case of right place, right person-and really lousy timing.”

“I’ll agree with that much, anyway,” Isabel muttered.

“Doesn’t really matter. The fact is, you found yourself losing control, and not just of your own emotions. Your abilities were suddenly different. You were so wide open you didn’t have a hope in hell of being able to even filter all the stuff coming at you. You could do that before, I’m told. Filter what came through, exert a kind of control over it even if you couldn’t block it out. But once you got to Hastings, once you connected with Rafe, you didn’t even have that.”

“What happened here was nothing that hadn’t happened before, as far as my abilities go.”

“No, but the scale of it was different. You’ve already admitted that much yourself.”

Reluctantly, Isabel nodded.

“And there he was, so close. Too close. All of a sudden, you got very spooked. So you opened the door to your chamber of horrors, thinking that would drive him away and things could get back to normal. But it did just the opposite. It brought him even closer, and it strengthened the connection between you two. So much so that he was somehow able to use it himself, even if only unconsciously.”

Hollis shook her head slowly. “I guess it was easier for you to just let him be the one in control for a while. Let him do what he wanted to do, needed to do. Protect you, shut out all the pain. Even if it meant shutting off your abilities and blinding you to the evil you know is almost close enough to touch.”