Blind Trust (24 page)

Chapter 24

MCKINLEY AND I entered a scene of pure panic. The staff,
volunteers, and those rescued had bunched up together in the hotel lobby for
safety and support. The seats all faced outward like they had circled the
wagons. A few volunteers had unearthed their shotguns and stood guard over
those who were lying on beds in the center.

I’d expected them to do the opposite as I figured most folks in
the face of a threat would hide behind locked doors and take care of their own.

Here, it was different and they seemed to take comfort from
helping each other and reassuring those who were gripped by the deepening fear.
Even in the darkness, there was light. I guessed that maybe in the aftermath of
the avalanche a lot had changed in their hearts. They had faced the might of
Mother Nature and it had banded them together pretty good.

“Where is Betty?” McKinley asked as a sniffling woman hurried over
to us.

“Second floor,” she said. “We moved the shooting victim up there
to keep him away from the gawkers.”

“I didn’t figure you folks as that kind,” I said. None of those
huddled in the center seemed like the kinda people who reveled in others
misfortune.

“We aren’t,” the woman confirmed. “But some of the tourists . . .
and
certain
people,” she scowled, “were treating him like
entertainment.”

“Brad Jewel,” McKinley and I said in unison.

A short ride in the elevator and we got to the door. McKinley
barred entry. “Ladies, if you will stay out here. I want to keep this scene as
clean as possible.”

He went inside and I turned to the woman. If I couldn’t go in,
least I could do was ask questions. “Is the man in there too?”

The woman shook her head.

“So you found Betty and the doctor in the room?”

“Yes.” Her grief was only held in check by her
shock. Some folks took a while to register the effects of trauma. “They were .
. . a mess.”

I patted her arm to comfort her. In my mind, I was solely focused
on her pain. I didn’t realize that I was actually touching her and getting no
visions for a couple of minutes. Go figure.

“We’ll find him,” I told her, trying to concentrate on reassuring
her. I went to ask her name but it flashed across my consciousness. “Rebecca,
you and the others downstairs. You’re gonna be just fine.” I had no idea where
the confidence came from. “The sheriff . . . I . . . we’ll find him.”

As I said the words, her shock lowered its shield and allowed the
grief to come gushing through. She launched herself into my arms and dissolved
into tears, her sobs shuddering from her. Renee always calmed when I hugged her
back so I did the same with Rebecca. Physical comfort wasn’t a strength of
mine. 

“Aeron?” McKinley poked his head around the door. He took one look
at me and Rebecca and his panic bubbled like a pot on a stove. It made me smile.
A lot of the guys I knew had the same reaction to a wailing woman . . . run.

“What did you find?” I asked, handing Rebecca to another lady
who’d no doubt come to investigate the noise.

“A mess,” he whispered, waiting for them to head around the corner.
“But you think it could be this man your friend shot. So, I’m guessing that you
know more about him than I do.”

I didn’t know nothing. He was as much a stranger to me as he was
to everybody else in St. Jude’s.

“Yannick Boucher,” Charlie said from behind me.

Yannick? It sure as shoots didn’t sound American. It sounded
French or one of them other European countries but then I guessed Aeron didn’t
exactly bring up visions of Miss America neither.

“James,” Charlie said, heading past us into the room. “We need to
get everyone inside. Lock the doors.”

I looked back through the open doorway down the corridor. The
atmosphere was changing, the room de-saturating all around me.

It meant someone bad, like Sam, was lurking. My heart pounded in
response.

People did three things when it came to the world around them in
my experience. There were people who sucked the color out of everything. They
were rare but like a swirling vortex of dark and everything around them got
tainted, robbed of the beauty until all that could be seen was grey and cold.
Sam had been one of those people. He had done so much damage.

Then some folks didn’t really effect anything all that much. They
were more balanced, sometimes giving and sometimes taking. Most of the people I
met were like that. They just ambled through their daily lives, sometimes
making a difference, sometimes not so much. 

Then there were special people. People who went above and beyond,
who shone and brightened up the place, beaming warmth, light, and love. They
filled the world with color and hope. Renee was one of those people to me. She
filled my life with color. 

“Let’s just take this logically,” McKinley said, drawing me back
from my musing. “What makes you think that this man is Yannick . . .
whatever-his-name-is?”

Charlie looked at me and I could see that he must have used the
cell.

“There’s reinforcements coming, James. They
are stuck a little ways down the mountain on the bends.” He turned to me.
“Where the avalanche was, the road curls around in layers . . . half the damn
thing dropped . . . they are clearing it as fast as they can.”

“What about flying, choppers maybe?”

Charlie and McKinley shook their heads.

“Weather is too bad for a plane and they tried the choppers but
visibility is just too bad.” Charlie sighed. “The layout of the mountain, the
trees, the snow, it just can’t be done.”

Well, there went my idea of CIG. I had visions of them rappelling
down like in the movies, guns loaded and ready with those shiny red beams
glinting through the darkness. It was disappointing. Frei would have looked
cool in black leather.

“Look,” McKinley said. “How can we be sure that it is this
Yannick?”

Charlie shut the door. I tried to ignore the carnage all around
us. Blood coated pretty much everything and the screaming horror of the scene
made my vision fade in and out.

“Aeron’s boss said so,” Charlie said, touching my shoulder to
focus me. “James, we have to let Commander Renee Black—Serena’s  real
name—loose and get everyone to safety.”

“I’m doing no such thing,” McKinley said. He folded his arms and I
was sure he would stamp his feet at any second. The devastation around us
filled the air until I swore that I was breathing in tension. “One, how did you
learn this information, Charlie?”

I watched as Charlie flicked his gaze from McKinley’s stare. I
guessed that Lilia or Frei had given him the secrecy first speech.

“And two,” McKinley continued. “Commander Black? Come on.”

“She is,” I piped up, meeting his glare. “We need her help.”

“I’m not buying it.” He ran his free hand over his stomach. A
comfort gesture if I’d ever seen one. If he didn’t believe it was true, it
weren’t, right? “What’s so special about this suspect that I need to let loose
a woman who shot him in the street?”

“Yannick Boucher. The Guillotine Killer. Do you remember the
news?” Charlie scratched the back of his neck and I shivered at the way his
fear wriggled up from below. “Guy in France . . . he went crazy . . . took a
load of hostages?”

McKinley looked about as clueless as I was and Charlie sighed.

“It was all over the news. The guy beheaded the victims, left them
all around the country . . . Then they discover he was here, right here under
our noses. Took them a year to find him.”

The nausea rolled in my stomach, the air too thick with death and
panic. I wanted to crawl out of the window or cry in a corner. I wasn’t sure
how to keep a handle on my own emotions and it made me feel even more wobbly.

“People?” I asked, my voice sounded squeaky.

Charlie swallowed so hard that I could see his Adam’s apple jump.
“Men . . . women.”

The three of us stared into the space between us.

“Wish your friend
had
hit him in the head.”

“
If
it
is
him,” McKinley said, determined to deny
everything. “And that begs the question why your friend, if she is some fabled
commander,
why
she didn’t shoot to kill?”

“I can’t say.” What was I, a mind reader? “Unless I can get her to
talk, I won’t neither.”

“I was told that we needed to get people indoors, that we needed
to secure the town.” Charlie looked at me. “Thing is, where do we start? How do
we know we aren’t just shutting him in with anyone?”

“Did Lil—I mean my . . . er . . . boss say what he might want?”

Charlie’s Adam’s apple once again flexed. “I think her exact words
were indiscriminate violence.”

Oh boy. That sounded like Sam . . . and then some.

“Okay, let’s just say that it is him. Why is Yannick here in St.
Jude’s?” McKinley asked.

I wanted to know the answer to that too. What would drive him
here? Had Renee recognized his face? Is that why she’d opened fire? If so, why
did that result in her getting locked in her mind?

“Sheriff,” I said. “Renee has gone into lockdown for a reason. If
this guy is as bad as we think, I need to see what happened for myself . . . I
could pinpoint him.”

“How?”

I took a deep breath. He already knew some of it, what was the
harm in him knowing more, right?

“See, that’s my job,” I told him. “But I need your hands to do it
. . . Charlie first.”

“Our hands?” Charlie asked, looking down at his mitts.

I walked to him and motioned for him to hold them out. There was
no way I could risk a fit and an idea popped into my head. I placed my hands
over his, not quite touching but enough to feel the heat from his skin. A
flashed image played before my eyes.

“You went to a briefing . . . before the avalanche . . . it was on
him.”

“Yeah,” he mumbled. “How—?”

“They thought he could be in the area.” I saw one of the CIG team
heading up the briefing in the guise of an FBI agent and that meant the CIG
must have known about Yannick. The avalanche played out and I sighed. “The
wanted posters are still in your truck.”

Charlie slumped his shoulders. “Could have saved us a whole lot of
trouble.” His eyes traveled in the direction of the mess on the bed, the mess I
was avoiding even glancing at. “The doc . . . Betty—”

“Don’t,” I told him, feeling his guilt. “It
won’t change a thing
. . . you didn’t do this.”

Focusing on the energy radiating up from his pores, I saw him
arguing with Joyce. She was begging him, she’d seen the incident.

“You saw a flash but you didn’t see Yannick’s face or you would
have remembered.” The vision continued, Simon in front of him trying to help
Renee up the steps, brick dust covered his collar.

“Wondered where it came from,” Charlie said as if he were
replaying the memory at the same time. “Wish I’d damn noticed.”

“You have a concussion,” I told him. “You lied to the doctor.”

Charlie shrugged. We both knew why he’d done it. Neither he or
McKinley trusted Hal to be able to cope with refugees from the avalanche.

I flinched as the gunshots sounded in my ears. I replayed the part
over and over. “Yannick fired but her shot hit him in the arm before he did . .
. it would have been pretty much point blank otherwise.”

My head ached with that thought. Thank cotton, Renee was a great
shot with great reactions. I turned to McKinley and pointed at his hands. “You
next.”

He froze. His fear rumbled over his head like thunder, swirling
its way inside his logic and attempting to skew it.

“I won’t harm you. I ain’t even touching you.” I stepped closer
and looked into his eyes, hoping that he would see the truth in mine. “What I
removed has gone. I would never do that to you.”

He nodded and the cloud over him lifted. “Guess if it helps.”

His hands pulsed with heat, the visions harder to control. James
McKinley had a lot of mixed emotions, events marred by his own fear, his own
heartbreak took a while to straighten out. He had been in the station, stewing
over the fact that he’d heard Grace talking about how wonderful Brad Jewel was.
When the avalanche hit, he hadn’t cared if he survived. I skipped forward to
the shooting.

“You turned when she called you,” I said. “You saw his face.”

My heart thudded like a slow clap, building in momentum as I
focused as hard as I could on the building scene in front of me, on Yannick’s
face, on his mouth.

“He called her somethin’,” I said, frowning. “What was it?”

Renee called out, she was flustered, terrified, she needed to tell
him something. Yannick barged past Martha, he sneered.

“Hey, Ice Queen . . . where’s your knight?” Brad’s voice off to
the side. Renee wasn’t listening.

Yannick stepped closer, a sneer, his eyes hollow, glinting. His
mouth opened. He was speaking French.