Whisper of Evil

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Nell drew a breath and nodded slowly. "I guess you did. But how? Everyone thought it was a heart attack."

"It wasn't difficult to cause a heart attack in a man who'd been on the verge of having one naturally for years. As a matter of fact, I used digitoxia. And I had to be there, of course, because I didn't want him calling for help."

"You watched him die?"

"I enjoyed watching him die."

As much as she had hated her father, Nell realized in that moment that she would not have enjoyed watching him die. Even knowing he had beaten her mother to death —

Beaten?

"I knew he had disowned Hailey," Kyle continued calmly. "That you'd been left everything. I honestly didn't think you'd come back here. So I did some discreet checking just to see if there was any way I could inherit — without having to prove paternity, of course."

"Because you couldn't?" Nell concentrated on the conversation, on him. There would be time later, she hoped, to solve any lingering puzzles.

"Because he hadn't acknowledged me. Maybe I could have got the name legally, but so what? And I didn't need his property. If you hadn't come back, I might have done something about that. But you did come back." His face darkened suddenly.

Nell, realizing abruptly what he must have "seen" when he summoned her to come to him tonight, said slowly, "I'm here tonight because you wanted me to be. Because you… came to me. You saw, didn't you? You saw Max with me."

"In your bed. Did he even bother to scrape the cow shit out from under his fingernails first?"

She chose her words carefully. "He didn't corrupt me, Kyle. He didn't spoil me."

"Of course he did."

"No. I love Max. And he loves me."

"That's not love," Kyle said scornfully. "Wrestling between the sheets? Rutting like a couple of animals? Have you ever watched, Nell? Seen what it looks like when two naked, hairy bodies do that? It's ugly. Unspeakably ugly. At least I didn't have to watch you do it. But Hailey…"

"You followed her. You watched her."

"I had to. She was sick, from the time she was a child. Sick. Randal Patterson infected her with his own sickness. Down in that basement of his, when she was just a little girl." His mouth twisted. "I wanted to kill him then. But I was just a kid myself, so I couldn't."

He shrugged and frowned down at the gun he still held with seeming negligence in one hand, and Nell took the opportunity to glance quickly at Ethan. She saw his eyelid flicker, his head move just a bit, and knew he was fully conscious now.

But it wasn't time. Not yet. Not yet.

She said the first thing she could think of to Kyle to keep the conversation going. "There were other men after Patterson. How could you keep blaming them rather than her?"

"She didn't know what she was doing," Kyle said, spacing every word carefully for emphasis. "But they did. They took advantage of her. I know she was upset when your mother went away, but —"

"Our mother didn't go away, Kyle. He killed her. You saw him do it."

Kyle looked at her for an unblinking moment, then smiled. "So did you."

"And you made me forget."

"I had to. With her whorish blood in you, I knew all it would take would be a trigger. Seeing her being punished, hearing her cry and plead and tell him she was really good when it was so obvious she was lying through her whoring teeth — that might have been enough."

Nell felt her stomach heave and fought desperately not to show the reaction. "Why didn't you… try that with Hailey? Why didn't you try to… to cure her sickness that way?"

"She never had the Gallagher gift. Oh, I tried, more than once. To reach her, to touch her mind. Even to go visit her while she was sleeping, the way I could visit you. But it never worked with her. I guess she was already ruined then, even though I didn't want to admit it."

"You visited me? While I was sleeping?"

Kyle smiled again. "All the time, before you ran away from Silence. When you ran away… I don't know. I lost you somehow. I wasn't even sure I could do it again when you came back, but it was really easy. Maybe because I knew you were there in the house. That must have been it, don't you think? That I knew where you were?"

"I… guess so."

"I had no idea I could make you do things. Started small, at first, telling you to turn over in bed. To get up and brush your hair for a while. To go up into the attic and find your doll."

"I wondered how she got onto my pillow," Nell said, forcing her voice to remain calm even though her very skin was crawling.

"You didn't figure it out, honestly? You had no idea it was me?"

Nell shifted her weight slightly, putting both hands on the cushion on either side of her hips as if to brace herself. Quietly, she said, "How could I guess? I didn't know about you. I didn't know I had a brother. And you wouldn't let me remember what you had done for me."

"There was no reason for you to remember." Kyle frowned. "I wonder if that's why you let Max Tanner into your bed, because you remembered you had the blood of a whore in your veins. Was that it?"

She ignored the question. "What was the final straw with Hailey? Why did you begin… punishing the men she'd had sex with? Was it because she ran off with Glen Sabella?"

Kyle laughed. "She never would have run off with him, Nell. She didn't care any more about him than she had any of the others. He just fed her sickness, don't you understand? After Grandmother died, Hailey used her house as a meeting place so they could rut. But that's all she wanted from him."

"You watched them."

"Sure. That last day, they had a fight about something. And he hit her. She just laughed, but… I didn't like it. I didn't like it at all. She always got dressed and left first, so I waited for that. And as soon as she'd gone, I went in. I had my nightstick. He was strong, but I caught him by surprise."

"You —"

"I hadn't really meant to kill him. Just punish him. But he wouldn't stop moving, wouldn't shut up and stop groaning. So I kept hitting him." He sighed. "Hailey had come back for something, I don't know what. She saw me. Saw what I'd done to him. That was when she ran."

"What… did you do with Sabella?"

"Buried him. And it was so easy, so simple. I thought it would feel different, killing someone I knew, but it didn't. It was just the same. Like swatting a fly."

"If he looks out one of the windows," Galen said in a voice hardly above a whisper, "we're screwed. With that huge moon, it's bright as day out here."

"He's not looking," Max said, keeping his voice just as low. "Nell's keeping him talking."

"That direct line you've got is coming in handy," Kelly Rankin said, double-checking her weapon for the third time. "Somebody want to explain that to me?"

"Later," Justin told her. "Max, how much longer can Nell keep him occupied?"

"I don't know. A few minutes, maybe." The past quarter of an hour had provided Max with ample understanding of just why the door Nell had flung open might be better closed most of the time; it was incredibly difficult for him to concentrate on two places at one time, let alone sort through the jumble of thoughts and emotions that were both his and hers.

Nell was trying to help him and he knew it. She was concentrating intently on Kyle Venable and what he was saying, not allowing herself to think too much about what that psychopath was telling her. And she kept her emotions damped down, refusing to give in to the horror and revulsion his revelations created in her.

But it was still distracting and not a little confusing for Max. He expected he'd get better with practice, and he was damned glad that door was open now with Nell in there confronting an insane killer, but he had to admit this could easily be more of a hindrance than a help.

"Just the two doors." Lauren Champagne eased up beside the others where they crouched in the shadows of some farm equipment at the edge of the field. "But there's a window I think I can get open on the other side of the house. That'll give us three ways in. Three chances."

Even with his attention split, Max looked at her and said, "That's your partner in there."

"If you're wondering if I can kill him if I have to, stop wondering." Even in the shadows of the equipment, there was enough light to show that her lovely face was utterly composed. "I have no problem disposing of rabid animals."

"And she's a crack shot," Justin murmured.

Lauren looked at him, one brow rising.

"The shooting range," he explained. "I saw you practicing a few weeks ago."

"Ah."

Galen said, "Max, you're the only one here who isn't a cop. If you've got Nell's gun, hand it over."

"Forget it."

"Max —"

"I'm also a crack shot."

"I don't give a shit," Galen told him politely. "This is potentially messy enough without having a civilian involved in a shoot-out."

"There isn't going to be a shoot-out," Max said. He swore under his breath. "Nell's in there. Do you really think I want bullets flying?"

"We're running out of time," Lauren said.

"And time is the issue," Galen added. "Or timing is. We'll only have one chance to get this right."

Max went still for an instant. "We have to move," he said. "Now."

"Killing… someone you knew? You mean Sabella wasn't the first?"

Kyle shrugged. "He was the first local. But Hailey had gone out of town sometimes, and I couldn't let those filthy bastards off scot-free, could I? They all had to pay. They infected her with more and more sickness, and they had to pay."

Nell, conscious of the clock ticking in her head, shifted slightly on the couch and said, "Which, I guess, brings us to Ethan. Why kill him, Kyle?"

"He's no different from the rest."

"Isn't he?"

"No. He just used her and tossed her aside like the others did. He fed her sickness. I have to punish him, just like I did the others."

"And what about me, Kyle? What did I do?" She kept her gaze steady on his face.

"You let Tanner into your bed. You're infected too, Nell. I thought the Gallagher gift would save you, but it hasn't. Don't you see that the infection is everywhere? I've tried and tried to cure it, and I think — I think the only way to do it is to cut it out."

"You mean to kill me."

"I have to cut out the infection," Kyle said, his tone chillingly reasonable.

"You'll kill me without giving me a chance to… repent? To change?"

For the first time, Kyle looked hesitant. "I don't want to."

"Then don't." Nell rose to her feet, careful to make no sudden movement that might startle him into using the gun he still held in one hand. She managed to turn just far enough so that the fingers of her left hand would be visible to Ethan without Kyle being able to see them move slightly.

Beginning with a fist, she began to very slowly extend one finger after the other, pausing briefly between each. Counting to five. She only hoped Ethan saw it, and got it, because she hadn't been able to think of any other way to warn him.

"If you kill the only family you have left here in Silence, you'll be all alone," she reminded him. "Is that really what you want?"

Kyle shook his head, more in reproach than negation, and his free hand reached for the rope he had set aside on a nearby table when Nell had arrived. "All I want is —"

Nell caught the flicker of movement in the foyer beyond Kyle in the same instant that she reached the count of five. She felt as well as heard Ethan wrench his chair sideways even as she went for her gun.

"Drop it, Venable!" Galen's voice rang out.

Maybe it was training or instinct that told Nell that Kyle would not obey the command. Or maybe it was simply the Gallagher blood or the Gallagher curse they shared that told her what he would do.

She saw him start to turn, to swing the gun toward her. Even saw, in one of those peculiar telescopic views one often saw in critical moments, his finger tighten on the trigger and his mouth curve in a smile.

It was as if time had slowed to a crawl. She was moving, leveling the gun Hailey had given her, throwing herself toward a chair that was the only possible cover nearby. She saw Kyle jerk before she heard the gun's report, saw scarlet bloom on his uniform shirt, then saw a second bullet hit him and wrench him around so that he was ironically in a better position to fire at her. Her gun bucked in her hand just as she saw the recoil of his own gun.

And then something slammed into her with the force of a train, and everything went black.

As soon as Nell opened her eyes, she knew that time had passed. A lot of time. She had that heavy, sandpapery-eyes sensation that told her she had slept for hours, yet felt remarkably well for all of that. At least until she moved.

"Ouch. Dammit."

"Serves you right. Don't move and it won't hurt so much."

She turned her head cautiously to see Max sitting beside her bed. Her hospital bed. Her head throbbed a bit, and she was conscious of a restricted sensation in the region of her left shoulder and arm. "What happened?" she wondered.

"You don't remember?"

Nell thought about it and, slowly, everything came back to her. Or most everything, anyway. "Is Kyle dead?"

"Yes." Max grimaced. "Even though it took a bullet from almost every gun we had to bring him down. And even then, he still managed to shoot you."

Which explained the constriction she felt in her arm and shoulder. Heavy bandages, from the feel of them. Nell fumbled with her right hand until she found the bed's controls, then used them to raise the head a few inches.

"Ouch," she said again as her shoulder began to throb in concert with her head. "The bullet didn't hit anything vital, did it?"

"Amazingly enough, no. Passed right through. The doc says most of the heavy bandages can come off by tomorrow, and then you'll wear a sling for a week or so. He says you heal fast."

Nell eyed him, perfectly aware that his level and unemotional tone was about as stable as nitro. The psychic door between them was securely closed; she had slammed it shut the second she had realized Kyle would probably shoot her, knowing too well that Max would have shared her pain — and possibly more than that. But even without the direct communication, she knew Max Tanner pretty well. "I feel fine," she told him. "Rested, in fact. How long have I been out?"

"It's nearly five. Sunday afternoon."

She bunked. "What? I slept all day?"

"The doc also said you seemed to need rest — the body's way of healing itself. Galen informed me that you'd been shot before and had slept for hours that time too."

"Is that what this is about?"

"What?"

"You're upset because I was shot before?"

Max drew a breath and let it out slowly, the picture of a man holding on to his temper or his patience. "I'm upset you were shot at all. Either time. Both times. You'll have to forgive me. Seeing you lying there bleeding is not destined to be one of my favorite memories."

"It doesn't happen often. Most agents go through their entire careers hardly drawing their guns, much less getting shot."

"It's happened to you twice. And how long have you been an agent?"

Nell smiled at him. "I'm fine, Max. Really."

He stared at her for a moment, then reached over and took her free hand in his. "Don't do that to me again. Ever."

"I'll certainly try not to. It wasn't much fun."

"Is that why you slammed the door shut? So I wouldn't be able to feel what happened to you?"

"I didn't want to shut you out. But I had to then. Feeling what I felt could have incapacitated you just when you needed to move or react."

Max hesitated, then spoke slowly. "Look, last night showed me pretty clearly both the benefits and the drawbacks of sharing a connection with you. So I understand better now why you'd prefer to keep the door closed most of the time."

"But?"

"But… all through those years without you, knowing that door was there, always there, and I couldn't do a damned thing to open it myself, was…"

"Frustrating? Maddening?"

"Painful."

She held his gaze steadily. "Another drawback of hitching your fate to a psychic's. I'm sorry, Max, but I don't know any way to change that, to give you any kind of control over it. I think — all that reading you did over the years, you must have been searching for an answer. Right?"

"Yeah, more or less."

"You didn't find one."

A breath of a laugh escaped him. "Hell, I didn't find anything that even came close to explaining what had happened between us, let alone offered a suggestion of how I could become an active rather than a passive participant."

Nell chose her words carefully, all too aware that, despite love, Max could well decide in the end that hitching his fate to a psychic was not a future he wanted. "Is that what you want? To be psychic yourself? Or is it more a matter of control, really?"

"It's a matter of sharing, Nell. I don't have to be psychic myself, not if you're willing — truly willing — to open yourself up to me. In the bad times as well as the good ones."

"If the door had been open when I got shot, you would have felt that, Max. I told you, it could have —"

"It could have gotten me hurt, yeah. But if it's a choice of hurts, then I choose sharing yours and risking whatever happens afterward. Because even with the distractions and potential problems of keeping that door open, every time you close it in my face I

feel like you're pushing me out of your life. Every time. And that hurts."

"I don't mean to shut you out. I never wanted to do that."

"You're shutting me out now." He shook his head. "I got enough last night to realize that you're pretty sure that the darkness you've felt in yourself all these years was Kyle somehow. His evil, not yours. That's true, isn't it?"

"I… think so. I can't be sure, of course, but I knew as soon as I woke up that there was a lightness in me I'd never felt before. As if a weight had lifted. But there's no guarantee, Max. Nothing to say my abilities won't eventually… break my mind in some way."

"I'm willing to risk it. I've had twelve years of being without you, Nell, and the one thing I know absolutely is that being with you is what I want."

"And my work? It's important to me."

"I know it is," he said immediately. "I would never ask you to give that up."

"Your ranch is here. Your life is here."

"We'll find a way to make it work, Nell. All you have to do is say it's what you want too."

"You make it sound so simple," she murmured.

"That part of it is. Tell me you love me and want to spend the rest of your life with me. Everything else will take care of itself in time."

"Max —"

"It really is that simple, you know. All the rest is just a question of discussion and practice."

She had to laugh, albeit unsteadily. "Our future, boiled down to two sentences?"

"Well, we'll build on it."

Nell instinctively shifted to move toward him and winced as her shoulder throbbed a protest. "Maybe I'd better postpone any rash decisions until I have the use of both arms again."

Max lifted an eyebrow at her. "You're stalling."

"No, I'm not."

"That's what it looks like from where I'm standing."

Nell laughed again, this time with more amusement. She was grateful that Max was backing off a bit, because despite his confident words she knew there was a lot for both of them to think about. "Maybe you should change positions," she suggested.

Max's fingers tightened around hers and he began to move toward her, but then Ethan walked into the room, looking very tired and rather interesting with a square bandage over one temple.

"So you're awake," he said to Nell. "Good. The doctors were about to sedate Max."

"Funny," Max said.

Nell smiled at Ethan. "You don't look bad, all things considered."

"I feel like a fool," he said frankly. "Trotting off cheerfully with the killer. Oh, yeah, some cop I am."

"Where were you supposed to be going with him?"

"I'd asked him to ride with me out to Matt Thorton's place. I had found something that bugged me in those birth records and wanted to ask him about it. I thought I was being smart in not going alone. Picked the wrong goddamned deputy to ride shotgun."

"You thought Thorton might be the killer?"

"I just wanted to know why he'd told me when he was a kid that his real mother had died, when she hadn't."

"And why had he?"

Ethan grimaced. "He was pissed at her. She wouldn't let him go on some stupid field trip, so he decided she wasn't his real mother at all. Which would have been fine, except that he had to tell me his fantasy."

Nell frowned. "Okay, but — what set off Kyle? I mean, why did he decide to kill you last night?"

"I made the second mistake of telling him that I was going through the birth records. Looking for whatever got George Caldwell killed."

"Notice I'm saying nothing," Max said.

"You're saying it loudly."

"Boys." Nell shook her head. "So, did he happen to mention what did get Caldwell killed?"

"He didn't, but 1 intend to find whatever it was. Eventually."

"In the meantime," Nell said, "where are the others?"

"Back at the office," Ethan answered. "Now that everybody's out in the open, so to speak, working together to do all the reports and collect evidence seemed best."

"And," Max said, "you might as well use FBI agents while you've got them, right?"

"Right."

"What about Hailey?" Nell asked. "She wasn't one of the storm troopers out at your place last night, was she, Ethan? Because I know she couldn't shoot, and she always punched like a girl."

He moved around to the other side of her bed and frowned down at her. "No, Hailey wasn't there. What made you think she would be?"

"She's the one who told me Kyle had you and was going to kill you. After she slapped me out of that sleepwalking stupor he'd put me in." Nell frowned at him, then at Max. "She went for help. Didn't she find you guys?"

An odd expression on his face, Max said, "Nell, Hailey wasn't there last night. She couldn't have been."

"What do you mean? I saw her, Max. I talked to her. She was there."

"Nell," Ethan said, after exchanging a glance with Max, "your boss got in touch a couple of hours ago. The… remains you uncovered out at your grandmother's place? The FBI lab was able to use dental records to make a match, a positive I.D. But it wasn't your mother."

"It's Hailey," Max finished slowly. "Their estimate is that she's been dead ever since she supposedly left Silence. Almost a year."