Blood Ties (11 page)

“Medical intervention? You mean—”

“I mean machines. To keep the body breathing, the heart beating. Under those conditions, the body can last years. Decades. But you wouldn’t be there. You wouldn’t be there ever again.”

B
obbie Silvers was proud to be a deputy. Of course, she wasn’t a
real
deputy, not yet; she was only partway through the training manual, and the sheriff refused to let her even begin weapons training.

Still, she was young, energetic, and determined, so she knew it was only a matter of time until she made it to full deputy status.

In the meantime, she worked as hard as she could to prove to Sheriff Duncan that she was deputy material. If he asked her to do something, no matter how seemingly routine or unimportant, she went above and beyond to make sure she did a thorough job of it.

Which was why she was, in the middle of the evening and the middle of her shift, still at her computer terminal, poring through missing-persons reports—covering a radius of five hundred miles.

“Give it up,” Dale McMurry advised. “Sheriff’s gone home for the night, and, besides, there isn’t much anybody can do ‘til morning.”

“The only thing I
can’t
do until morning,” she told him without looking at him, “is talk to a first-shift deputy or other officer. Law enforcement is 24/7, Dale, or didn’t you know that?”

He grunted. “It took you ten minutes to find the right state bureau guy and get their list, and twenty to get the one from the cops two counties over. At this rate, you’ll be at it until midnight and still not get done.”

“The county doesn’t pay me to sit with my feet up and read magazines,” she told him. “If I’m still working on this when the next shift shows up and it’s time to clock out, so what? As long as I’m making progress—trying to make progress—then I’m doing my job.”

“I’m doing my job,” he said, mildly defensive. “I’m waiting to answer the phone. So far, it hasn’t been ringing much.” He got out of his chair and went to change the channel of the TV resting on a nearby filing cabinet, grumbling underneath his breath at the lack of a remote.

“Don’t turn on wrestling, please,” she said, still without looking at him.

“What do you care? You haven’t taken your eyes off that screen since you talked to the SBI guy.”

“I care because you get too caught up in the so-called action and end up yelling and throwing things at the screen. Find a nice cheerleader or beauty competition instead. You drool quietly.”

He threw a balled-up piece of paper at her.

Bobbie ducked, sent him a smile to indicate she was only kidding, and went back to her work. Not that she had a whole lot to work
with
. From the remains of both victims, only the barest of preliminary descriptions could be listed with any certainty—and height, weight, eye color, and probable hair color in the case of the female left things pretty damn vague.

The list Bobbie had painstakingly compiled from five hundred miles around Serenade now contained more than a hundred names of people reported missing and not yet found.

With so few specifics about their victims, Bobbie wasn’t about to try to narrow that list on her own. But what she could and did do was to include a brief profile on each of the missing men and women. Most of the details were in the reports she’d gathered from other law-enforcement agencies, so it was an easy—if tedious—matter to condense the information under simple categories:
Height; Age; Weight; Coloring; Missing From; Missing Since; Reported Missing By; Criminal Record
(it was almost always
no
under that category);
Financial Problems; Unexplained Financial Transactions; Beneficiaries of Death
.

That last one creeped Bobbie out, but it had to be noted, because at least half a dozen of the missing people carried hefty life-insurance policies left to spouses. Not so unusual, of course, but worth noting, in her opinion.

So Bobbie noted it. And noted all the other bits of information she had gathered. And then she put it all on a somewhat crude spreadsheet, hoping that something would help the far-more-experienced FBI agents identify the two poor souls whose remains had been found so horribly tortured and mangled.

And it wasn’t until just before midnight and the end of her shift, while barely aware of Dale yawning over a less-than-involving seventies-era sitcom, that Bobbie saw something unexpected. Very unexpected.

She rechecked all the information she had, bit her lip for a moment in indecision, then reached for the phone, hoping to find another second-shift cop in another quiet law-enforcement agency with time on his or her hands and the will to stay past this shift and dig just a little deeper.

“S
o nobody comes back from being lost in the gray time?” Hollis held her voice steady.

Diana shook her head. “Nobody, as far as I know. Because even if the body is kept alive on this side, the gray time really is a corridor between two realities. Nothing belonging to either side can exist in there indefinitely; the guides have told me that much. For us, from this side, the exhaustion becomes overwhelming, all our energy is drained away, and…”

“And?”

“And our spirits apparently pass on to whatever lies beyond the gray time. I’m told there’s peace to be found there. But I’m also told peace isn’t necessarily the destination for every soul.”

“So there is a hell,” DeMarco said, sounding thoughtful. “I’ve always wondered.”

Diana nodded a bit hesitantly. “I think so. At least it sounds that way, that something… unpleasant… is waiting for at least some spirits. Calling it hell is probably as good as anything else.”

Hollis said, “Let’s not get sidetracked by a philosophical—or theological—discussion, if you don’t mind. Not tonight, anyway. Diana, you’re basically telling me that if I got trapped in the gray time and couldn’t find my way out before the door closed, I’d be dead.”

“Afraid so.”

“And the door closes—how?”

Diana blinked. “You know, I haven’t really thought about it that way. Because there are doors in the gray time that seem literal, and they open or close without seeming to affect me.”

“Guess,” Hollis suggested.

“Okay.” She thought about it for a moment. “My guess is that if anyone of this world stays in the gray time too long or… somehow … wanders too deeply into the gray time, gets too far away from their physical self, then the door would close. The door we open as mediums. I suppose, thinking about it, that it’s less a door than a connection that gets severed—the connection between the body and the spirit. Cut that tie or have something cause it to snap, and… and it doesn’t get repaired. The spirit can’t return to the body.”

“Well, that doesn’t sound fun.” Hollis’s voice remained calm, even somewhat sardonic. But her eyes were wide and dark, and she continued to chew on her thumbnail—until DeMarco stepped away from the dresser, reached around to grasp her wrist, and with seeming gentleness pulled her hand down and away from her mouth.

Very interesting indeed
, Diana thought, distracted again.

Hollis turned her head briefly toward him and said, “Leave me my vices, will you?” But her voice was still calm, and her hand remained in her lap where he had put it.

“That’s not a vice, it’s just a bad habit,” he said. “If you’re interested in vices, I’ll go find some booze. Don’t know about the rest of you, but I could use a drink.”

Diana shook her head. “Not me. After spending most of a lifetime medicated to the gills, I don’t drink.” As personal as the first part of that information was, she was completely aware that most if not all the other SCU agents knew at least some of her history. As Quentin had pointed out with a shrug, even stuff never said out loud was known when there were so many telepaths around.

Hollis laced her fingers together in her lap and said, “I’m so tired one drink would knock me on my ass. Diana, I hope you have a few tricks you can teach me to protect myself over there. But even if you don’t, stop blaming yourself, okay? It
was
my idea to go the first time. I can deal with the consequences. I’m a survivor.”

“She is that,” Quentin agreed. “More lives than a barrelful of cats, if you ask me.”

Diana wished that made her feel better. It didn’t.

Either seeing that or else pursuing a thought of his own, Quentin added, “And then there’s Reese. After tonight, I’m betting he could be Hollis’s lifeline and pull her out before she gets lost.”

“Happy to oblige,” DeMarco said.

“Let’s hope it isn’t necessary,” Hollis said without looking at him, her tone rather careless. “Anyway, at the moment I’m more interested in what happened after I was pulled out tonight. Why something in the gray time—presumably a spirit—tried to trick you, Diana. And what it was trying to trick you into doing. Or believing.”

“I don’t know.”

“Can you speculate? Guess again?”

Diana shook her head, trying to throw off the last tendrils of that weird fuzziness in her mind. “I can’t even imagine what it might be.”

“Sure you can,” DeMarco said.

She stared at him, frowning. “Oh? And how is that?”

He didn’t appear to be the least bit bothered by her stiff tone. “First, stop assuming it was a spirit. Just because we haven’t encountered another medium who can walk in the gray time doesn’t mean one doesn’t exist. In fact, it’s almost certain one does, since psychic abilities aren’t unique. Certain aspects, sure; I have a double shield and, so far as we know, that’s unique. But most psychics have a shield of some kind, and without knowing every single one of them I could hardly be sure there isn’t another double shield out there.”

“He has a point,” Quentin noted thoughtfully.

DeMarco nodded and said to Diana, “You can walk in the gray time, and you’re exceptionally strong there because of most of a lifetime’s experience. But on two separate occasions, Hollis has been able to function there as well.”

“If you can call it functioning,” Hollis muttered.

“I can,” DeMarco told her, then added before she could comment, “She may not be able to open the door to the gray time, but only one previous visit enabled her to form a connection to that place, to be drawn back into it when Diana opened the door. Which could mean it’s a lot more accessible to mediums than we’ve assumed and that others have been drawn there as well. And that, somewhere, another medium exists who was drawn to cross through that doorway rather than just open it for spirits. Curiosity alone would surely drive at least some to wonder what it would be like. And it’s a small step from wondering to attempting.”

Hollis said, “It would better explain the deception. I mean, if the guides have never attempted to deceive you, why start now? But if it’s another psychic trying to do that…”

DeMarco finished: “…what better way to attempt a deception than to show you a face you trust?”

“It makes sense,” Diana allowed. “At least as much as any other possibility does.”

Quentin said, “It also opens up the probability that this particular enemy knows you well enough to
know
who you trust. Or has been watching long enough to … draw certain conclusions.”

Diana wasn’t sure which possibility made her more uneasy. But both of them did. She was about to comment on that when the sudden ringing of a cell phone made all of them—except DeMarco—jump. He reached back to pick up Diana’s cell phone from the dresser, looked rather automatically at the caller I.D., and then tossed the phone to land within Diana’s reach.

“Elliot Brisco. Your father, I gather.”

Diana reached her free hand to pick up the phone—and turned it off midway through its ring tone. “Yeah. He’s been out on the West Coast—and never considers time differences when he’s calling me. Or anyone else, for that matter.”

“Could be an emergency,” Hollis suggested.

“Trust me, it isn’t. Just him ready to argue one more time that joining the FBI was the worst idea of my life.” She drew a breath and let it out slowly, then ruthlessly got them back on topic. “Okay, so let’s assume for the moment another medium
was
there in the gray time. And either knows me well enough to be sure of who I trust or else has been able to read me. I don’t have much of a shield, right?”

It was DeMarco who answered. “Not much of one, no. But you don’t broadcast like Hollis does, so it would probably take a fairly strong telepath to read you.” Before Hollis could make an indignant comment, which she seemed about to do, he added, “But there’s nothing to say another medium with a lesser telepathic sense might not be able to read you far more clearly in the gray time than on this side of the door. Or even another medium who isn’t telepathic at all. A lot of the
rules
we’ve come to accept in this world, this reality, may not be true in that one. In fact, the chances are pretty good that there are a lot of differences over there.”

Diana wished she could dispute that, but the more she thought about the possibility, the colder she felt. “So another medium could be reading me in the gray time. And maybe… influencing me?”

DeMarco was utterly matter-of-fact. “Maybe. We’re generally more vulnerable in an unconscious state—which is what your dreams and trances amount to.”

“You’re strong in the gray time,” Quentin reminded her.

“Am I? What if I only think I am? There’s… something I’ve never been able to explain about the gray time. It hasn’t happened often, but throughout my life I’ve awakened from trips there to find my physical self somewhere other than bed. Somewhere dangerous.”

Quentin nodded, clearly remembering. “Up to your waist in a lake. Driving your father’s sports car at high speed when you were too young to drive at all.”

“Yeah. And there were other things, awakenings I haven’t told you about. Finding myself in other dangerous places or just baffling ones. Sometimes miles and miles from home. With no memory or understanding about what I was doing there. Or what I was meant to do. At the time I thought those things were more symptoms I was losing my mind—or had already lost it. Once all the meds were gone and I could think clearly, once I knew I was a medium and understood what that meant, I guess I thought I’d been trying to help a guide get a message to someone but that my body and spirit were still so out of sync, things got confused and I tried to act before knowing what it was I was supposed to be doing, before I was even awake.”