Stealing Shadows

TWENTY

There was a long silence, and then Matt said carefully, "The roads are a mess. Maybe he stopped to pull somebody out of a ditch. He has chains in that Jeep of his, and a winch. That's probably it. I'll send a patrol car out that way."

"He would have called. He would have called one of us."

"Maybe he hasn't had time. Don't make yourself crazy before we know if there's a reason."

Cassie's throat was so dry, she could hardly swallow. "I'm coming to town," she said.

"Cassie, listen to me. I wasn't kidding about the media. There are three news vans parked in front of the station, and the place is crawling with press. You do not want to be here."

"Matt – "

"You stay put. I'll check it out and call you the minute I know something."

"Hurry," she whispered. "Please hurry."

For an endless hour Cassie paced the floor and bit her nails, her imagination going wild. Even though she knew it would be impossible, she tried to reach out to Ben, telling herself it simply wasn't conceivable that something could have happened to him without her knowing about it. She would have felt it, surely.

All she felt was terror, and it was all hers.

When Matt's cruiser pulled up in her driveway, Cassie knew the news would be bad. Numb with dread, she went out onto the porch to meet Matt and Bishop, and their faces told her that her instincts were right.

"He's not dead," she said.

"No, he's not dead. At least – we don't think so." Matt took her arm and led her back into the house, and the physical contact made her acutely aware of his worry.

Cassie sat down on the sofa, staring from one man to the other. "What do you mean, you don't think so?"

Matt sat down beside her. "We found the Jeep but not Ben. It looks like he stopped to clear a fallen tree from the road. Idiot. The Jeep could have made it over easily. He was thinking about whoever came along behind him."

"I don't understand," Cassie said. "If he wasn't with the Jeep, then where is he? What happened?"

From his position on his feet near the fireplace, Bishop said, "There were tire tracks showing another vehicle came up behind his. And that tree didn't come down naturally."

"You mean – some kind of trap?"

Matt nodded. "We think so, Cassie. It looks like someone else stopped, ostensibly to help Ben. Then grabbed him, probably after knocking him out. There's – We found a little blood at the scene." Quickly he went on. "I have some of my people crawling all over the scene, and I sent for the tracking dogs, but I'm not expecting them to pick up much of a trail. Back at the station they're pulling files and cross-checking to see if we can come up with anybody who might have had an especially strong grudge against Ben."

Cassie tried to concentrate. "Who? Who would have done something like this?"

"Like any other prosecutor and former judge, Ben's made his share of enemies, and while any of them might have run him off the road, setting a trap like this is way beyond what I'd expect. This was… I don't know… personal somehow." Matt exchanged a glance with Bishop, then said, "We found something on the front seat of the Jeep."

"What?"

Matt reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a plastic evidence bag. Inside was a single red rose, painstakingly fashioned from tissue paper.

"Oh, my God," Cassie whispered.

The headache had lessened to no more than a dull throb, and the blood had dried on the side of his face, but Ben still felt lousy. Every time he turned his head too fast, dizziness swept over him and nausea churned in his stomach, and shouting a few times in the vain hope somebody other than his captor would hear had earned him nothing except more pain and queasiness. Cold and stiff, he kept flexing his fingers in the hope of warding off total numbness and in the effort to loosen the ropes binding his wrists to the arms of the chair where he sat.

He had studied every inch of the room, and there wasn't much to see. It was mostly barren, the two windows heavily curtained, the ancient carpet on the floor stained and threadbare. One other chair sat by the closed door. There was a fireplace where a low fire burned and took the edge off the chill; the only other light came from an incongruously elegant torchere between the windows.

So all he could say for sure about where he was being held was that there was some electricity, even if it wasn't being wasted on heat. That and his present position told him his captor wasn't much concerned about the well-being of his hostage. The iron chair Ben was tied to was dead center in the room and bolted to the floor, and several attempts had convinced him it would take more than muscle to budge it. He was glad his wrists were tied to each arm of the chair rather than behind his back, but if the position was more comfortable, it didn't provide extra leverage to dislodge the chair.

He thought he had loosened the ropes a bit though. Unless that was only wishful thinking.

The initial shock of finding himself helpless had finally passed, and he was left with anger and bewilderment; fear, he thought, would undoubtedly come later. What occupied his mind in those first long minutes of silence was the question of who hated him enough to do this.

He had a hazy memory of stopping the Jeep to clear away a tree fallen across the road, but nothing beyond that. He could only assume that someone had come up behind him and hit him with something heavy.

But who?

He had put away a few people in his time, but Ben couldn't think of anyone with a resentment powerful enough to arrange his kidnapping. The timing also struck him as extremely odd; with virtually everyone in the county overwhelmingly relieved by the capture of a serial killer, who would be concentrating on old grudges?

He kept working to loosen the ropes, taking advantage of being alone in the room because he had a fair idea that wouldn't last long. And it didn't.

When the man walked into the room a few minutes later, pushing some kind of rolling cart covered with a white cloth, Ben's first realization was that he was a total stranger. He was a medium-sized man on the wiry side, not particularly tall or particularly powerful in appearance, with straight hair-colored hair and the pasty skin of someone who didn't spend much time outdoors. The only unusual physical characteristic Ben noticed was that he had incongruously large hands and feet, both of which lent him a slightly ludicrous air. His features were regular, even pleasant, and he wore a small half-smile.

It was the smile that made Ben suddenly, acutely, aware of the chill in the room.

"Hello, Judge. That's what they call you, isn't it? Judge?" His voice was deep, the tone amiable.

"Some do." All his instincts told Ben to hold on to both his wits and his temper, to keep his body relaxed and his own voice calm. But the hair on the back of his neck was standing straight out.

"Oh, I think most do. And I think you like it." "What do I call you?" Ben asked. The man smiled, revealing even white teeth. "What is that thing you see on T-shirts everywhere these days? Bob's wife, Bob's boss, Bob's brother. Just call me Bob."

"Okay, Bob. Should I know what it is I've done to piss you off?"

"Should – but don't." He got the chair that was by the door and placed it in front of Ben a few feet away, beside the covered cart, and sat down. The picture of relaxed interest, he clasped his big hands together in his lap and continued to smile pleasantly at his captive. "Do we play a guessing game?" "Bob" shook his head. "Oh, I'm quite willing to tell you, Judge. That's the whole point of this, after all. No one should ever die without knowing why." "So tell me."

"The oldest male game in the world, Judge. Rivalry." "I see. So what are we competing for?"

"Why, for her, of course. For Cassie."

Ben controlled the urge to lunge at the other man, and kept his voice cool. "And here I thought all I had to worry about was an FBI agent."

Bob's smile widened. "Bishop? Neither of us has to worry about him, not where Cassie's concerned. He's not in love with her. He likes to believe he understands her, but he doesn't really. I'm the only one who really understands Cassie."

That his captor knew Bishop was bad enough; the caressing way his voice dropped whenever he said Cassie's name was beginning to make Ben's skin crawl. "What gives you this special insight?" he asked.

"It's very simple, Judge. I understand Cassie because, unlike you or Bishop or any other man in her life, I'm a part of her. I've been inside her head for years."

Matt said, "Bishop had much the same reaction and refused to explain. So why don't you? What does this paper flower mean to both of you?"

Cassie swallowed hard and forced herself to remain calm. "It started… more than four years ago. The L.A. police called me in on a series of murders. It was unusual because the killer hit all age groups, from little girls to elderly women, and all races. The victims had nothing in common except that they were female. He killed them in different ways, tortured some but not others, hid some bodies while leaving others out in the open so they could be easily found. It seemed to be almost a game to him to keep everybody guessing. The FBI profiler they called in was tearing his hair out."

"So the police called you in," Matt said. "And?" "He always left a paper rose on his victim's body, and I used that to connect with him. I tapped into him pretty easily just as he was stalking his next victim. The police were able to save the girl, but the killer slipped away in the confusions And vanished." "You mean he stopped killing?" Cassie nodded. "For a while, at least that's what the police believe. It was more than six months later when three more bodies turned up, each left with one of his trademark paper roses. Again I was able to tap into his mind, and again he managed to slip away. For the next couple of years he'd suddenly go active, kill two or three times, then vanish before anybody could get close. Including me. There was no pattern we could fix on, no way we could anticipate when and where he'd begin killing again. Then…" "Then?"

It was Bishop who took up the story, his voice cool. "Then he killed a series of children in rapid succession, and the entire city was going crazy. Finally, and for the first time, the killer left behind more than a rose. He left a fingerprint. The police were able to identify him as one Conrad Vasek, an escaped mental patient with the distinction of having terrified every doctor forced to try treating him in the twenty years since he was committed at the age of twelve."

Matt said, "And they had no luck finding him even though they knew who he was."

"None. The man was acknowledged as a twisted genius, psychopathic since birth but brilliant. And he loved games." Bishop's gaze shifted to Cassie. "Especially new ones."

"You weren't there," Cassie murmured, staring down at the rose.

"I heard about it afterward," Bishop said. He looked at Matt. "Just about the time Vasek killed an elderly woman and then a teenager, word leaked out to the press that the L.A. police were trying to track him using a psychic. Vasek must have seen it as a challenge. He grabbed a little girl but didn't kill her right away. Instead, when Cassie connected to him, he led the police a long and merry chase and then was somehow able to distract Cassie just long enough."

"I misinterpreted what I saw," Cassie said. "Sent the police the wrong way. When they found the little girl, her body was still warm."

"And you got the blame?" Matt demanded incredulously.

"I blamed myself. And it was… just too much. I couldn't handle it anymore. That's when I left L.A. and came here."

Softly Bishop said, "I wonder how long it took Vasek to find you."

Cassie stared at him, with dawning understanding. "Of course," she whispered. "That's why the light was falling from two different directions when I tried to reach Mike Shaw. That's how Mike was able to push me out with such strength, to block me for so long even though he isn't telepathic. Because it wasn't him. Somehow Vasek was linked to Mike's mind, controlling him. Vasek was controlling him all along."

"Inside her head." Ben spoke slowly.

"She didn't know I was there, of course. She thought we were in contact only whenever she was helping the police try to catch me. But I've been able to slip into her mind virtually at will for a long time now. Into her thoughts. Her dreams."

"Her nightmares." Until that moment Ben had never been able to truly see the substance, the reality, of Cassie's monsters. But then he saw. Finally he understood. And it wasn't the chill of the room that sank deeper into his bones and left shards of ice so cold they burned. Dear God, Cassie…

The monster calling himself Bob continued to smile. "Her nightmares? Oh, I don't think so. All I did was… encourage her… to use her natural gifts. Remind her who she really was. That's why I followed her here. She thought she could run away from who she was, but I couldn't let her. We were meant to be together, Cassie and I, and I had to show her that. I had to show her that our minds were already joined."

"By killing more women?"

"By making certain she used her natural gifts."

Ben swallowed the bile rising up in his throat and forced himself to say calmly, "So you came here and looked for a tool you could use to attract her attention. To impress her with your own abilities. You needed someone with a weak mind you could control, someone with the instincts – if not the expertise – of a natural killer. Mike Shaw."

"You must admit, Michael was perfect. And I was quite lucky to find him in this pissant little town of yours. A sociopath more than ready for his first real kill. All he needed was a little guidance, and that was simple enough."

"How did it feel," Ben asked, "to kill by remote control?"

Bob seemed gratified by the question, clearly happy to explain. "Interesting, actually. And more satisfying than I had expected. He's totally primitive, of course, driven by rage and imagined slights, and with absolutely no finesse. I'm sure your experts will find he's clinically insane. Not too bright either, I'm afraid. But he made excellent clay I could mold to fit my needs."

"And your need was to impress Cassie."

"I wanted her to understand," Bob said reasonably. "That we were two halves of a whole, that we belonged together. I knew that from the first time she touched my mind. But she didn't seem to understand the glory of the kill, and how… liberating it is. So I had to show her."

"Then why use a tool?" Ben asked. If he could keep him talking, let him reveal more and more of himself, then maybe, just maybe a weakness would become apparent. Something Ben could work on, as he worked on witnesses in a courtroom to get what he needed from them.

"Why, to show Cassie how powerful I am, of course." Bob was thoughtful. "And I am, you know. Quite powerful. I had to maintain the connection with Michael most of the time in order to keep him under control, while also hiding my presence from Cassie."

"How were you able to do that?"

"The connection to Michael was simple to establish, and not terribly difficult to maintain. He just needed to be in constant physical contact with an item that belonged to me. As for hiding my presence from Cassie, I'd been practicing that for nearly three years."

"Why hide from her at all? I mean, if you were intent on impressing her, why not reveal yourself from the first?"

"To surprise her, of course." Bob's smile faded at last, and his ordinary-colored eyes took on an odd shine. "That was before I realized you were going to confuse her."

"Is that what I did?"

"We both know it is. She was completely untouched, innocent, and you ruined that. You preyed on her weak female body to scramble her instincts and senses, used your experience to teach her a passion of the flesh." For just an instant he seemed faintly distracted, as though hearing a distant sound, but then he shook his head. "You corrupted her."

"Then I'm surprised you still want her."

"I'll have to purify her, naturally. She can never return to her untouched state, but she can be made more worthy of my love."

Ben wasn't about to ask how. Instead, he said coolly, "Well, I didn't butcher other women for her, but I'm willing to bet Cassie prefers my ideas of romance to yours."

"You confused her. She was completely focused on me and what I could do when she was in California, and she would have regained that focus. If not for you." His smile was thin and particularly unpleasant. "You told her you loved her, didn't you, Judge?"

"Don't you know?" Ben taunted softly. "Weren't you in her mind when I was in her bed?"

The odd shine in those ordinary eyes intensified, but a fragment of Bob's smile remained. "You know, I sat in court one day and watched you, Judge. You're very good. Quite skilled at… going for the jugular. But there's something you've forgotten, I'm afraid."

"Oh? And what's that, Bob?"

Bob reached over to flip back a corner of the white cloth on the cart beside him, revealing a varied selection of implements that had only one thing in common. They were all very, very sharp. He picked up what looked like a scalpel and tested the edge with his thumb, then smiled at Ben.

"When I go for the jugular, I use a real knife."

Matt hung up the phone and turned to Cassie. "You were right about the damned boots. They practically had to cut them off Shaw, but Vasek had scrawled his name inside sure enough. How the hell -?"

"They were always too tight," Cassie murmured from her position near the fireplace, where she stood, petting Max. She couldn't sit still any longer, and for the past few minutes had been restlessly prowling the room.

Matt was baffled. "Why did Vasek have him wear his boots?"

"Connections. Vasek is an amazingly strong telepath, but what he was trying to do was incredible. To control another mind like that, even a sick and broken one… He needed something of his always touching Shaw, so the connection would be almost automatic. According to what the L.A. police found out about him, he's quite a bit smaller than Shaw, so none of his clothing would fit, but a physical oddity is that he has large hands and feet. Shaw could wear his boots, even though they were a bit too tight. It worked quite well."

Matt shook his head. "One of my deputies is bringing them out here. What makes you think you'll be able to connect with Vasek using the boots when the flower didn't even get you close?"

"Because he's been using them as a conduit." Cassie drew a deep breath, trying to keep herself calm and centered, trying to save her energy. "I don't know if it'll work, Matt. But I have to try."

Matt didn't ask if she'd tried to contact Ben telepathi-cally. He knew she had, and had failed, and her desolation had been so painful to see that he had turned away.

He looked at the FBI agent and said, "What I can't understand is this. If he did all this to impress Cassie, then how does grabbing Ben and suddenly going silent figure into his plans? Is it because we caught Mike? Because his tool isn't available any longer?"

Bishop's gaze was on Cassie. "He grabbed Ryan out of pure jealousy, I'd say. It's been fairly obvious in the last few days that Cassie's in love with him, and that he had elected himself her protector." She flinched but said nothing.

Matt asked bluntly, "Then why not just kill Ben outright? Why take him alive?"

Even with a face as unexpressive as granite, it was still obvious that Bishop didn't want to answer that question. But finally, softly, he did. "Because he wants to play with him for a while. To appease his jealousy and to punish Cassie."

Cassie made a smothered little sound, then said, "I'm going to shut Max up in the kitchen before the deputy gets here," and hurriedly led the dog from the room.

"Next time," Matt said grimly to Bishop, "just tell me it's a dumb question, all right?"

"All right. Any luck with those tire tracks?" "I've got people combing both sides of that road trying to pick them up again. With so much sleet and mud, we've at least got a shot." He fell silent for several minutes, then said, "Do you think Ben's still alive?" "Yes."

Matt looked at him curiously. "Why?" "Because a cat likes to torment its prey before it kills it."

"I'm sorry I asked."

Bishop shook his head. "It won't be physical torture, not at first. From what I know of Vasek, he'll want to talk, brag about what he was able to do, probably try to show himself off as a better match for Cassie. Plus, it should throw him off stride to have a male victim. Ryan can work that to his advantage if he's smart enough to use it."

Matt hoped his friend was smart enough.

When Cassie came back into the living room a few minutes later, she was calm again. And if the two men noticed that her eyes were red-rimmed, neither commented.

"Where's that deputy?" she demanded of Matt.

"Another five minutes, Cassie. Be patient."

"I can't be patient."

"Try. And when the boots are here, assuming they work for you, what do you mean to do? If Vasek is as strong as you claim, how the hell can you get into his mind without his knowing?"

"I will, that's all." Her voice was flat. "I just will."

Matt might have continued to object, but the phone rang just then and he went quickly to answer it. "I told everybody to shut off the walkie-talkies. The damn things can be heard for miles," he muttered in an explanation nobody asked for.

He said hello, then "yeah" a couple of times. Cassie watched him and without even trying caught a few flashes of a narrow dirt road and an old house in the distance. A knock on the door distracted her, and by the time Bishop answered it and brought one of Matt's deputies into the living room, the sheriff was hanging up the phone.

"They've found the place," she said to Matt.

"Maybe." He was more grim than hopeful. "The tire tracks match, and they lead to what's supposed to be a deserted house. It would help if we could have verification."

Cassie took the pair of gleaming snakeskin boots from the young deputy, who looked bewildered but gave them up without a protest.

Matt said to him, "Stand there in the doorway and keep your mouth shut, Danny."

"Yes, sir."

Cassie sat down on the sofa, holding the boots in her hands and staring at them.

Remembering what Ben usually did, Matt asked, "Will you need a lifeline?"

"Not for this. I just want to see if I can…" She closed her eyes and after a moment murmured, "I can get in. There's one part of his mind he's not guarding, the part that used to be connected to Mike Shaw. It isn't a large doorway, but it's there. And it's big enough."

"Can you tell me where he is, what he's doing?" Matt asked.

She frowned slightly, then started and opened her eyes. "He almost caught me. He's quick. Very quick." She chewed on her bottom lip as she set the boots on the coffee table. Her voice was steady when she said, "I wasn't deep enough to see through his eyes. But for an instant he thought about where he was, and I saw the same house I saw in your mind, Matt."

"I was afraid of that. The house is very isolated, Cassie, practically out in the middle of a field," the sheriff said. "No cover at all." His brooding gaze shifted to Bishop. "If Vasek sees us coming, he could hold us off indefinitely. With Ben as his hostage. And if he's armed – "

"He usually is," Bishop said.

"Shit. I just don't see how we can catch him by surprise. If we go in in force, he'll easily see us coming, and have plenty of time to – "

Cassie lifted a hand to cut him off, unwilling to hear possibilities. She got to her feet and went to stand by the fireplace, already feeling cold. "He won't see you coming. I'll distract him."

"How?" Bishop demanded.

She looked at the agent. "I'll give him something else to think about. Me."

"So," Ben said, "your only way of dealing with a rival is to cut his throat, huh?"

"Not my only way. Just the best way. You have to be out of Cassie's life."

"And then she'll tumble into your arms? I don't think so."

"She will come to me quite willingly, Judge," the madman said. "Once I take care of you. Once she learns the lesson."

"The lesson being?"

"That she belongs to me. That I will not tolerate anyone else in her life. Not a lover, certainly. And if, once you're gone, she still fails to understand and I have to kill two or three of the people she considers friends, well, I'm sure that will get the point across." His smile widened. "Don't you agree?"