Chill of Fear (2 page)

"What's her name, Nate?"

"Belinda. Her father says she's never answered to a nickname. She's eight."

Quentin turned without another word and headed in the direction of the rose garden out behind the main building.

"There goes a man with demons riding him," McDaniel said almost absently.

"What sort of demons, Lieutenant?"

"You'd have to ask him. All I know is what I've observed the last couple times he's been here. And all that tells me is that he's haunted by a crime nobody's been able to solve in twenty years of trying. The difference is, Quentin just can't let it go."

Bishop nodded slightly, but all he said was, "We all have that one case, don't we? The one that haunts us. The one we dream about at night."

"Yeah. But there's another difference for Quentin. The case that haunts him is right out of his nightmares. And his own childhood."

"I know," Bishop said.

It was, everyone agreed, creepy enough that a child had vanished right out of a bright rose garden on a sunny summer afternoon; what was even more chilling was when the search-and-rescue bloodhound, after sniffing Belinda's little pink sweater, merely sat down and howled mournfully.

"Has he ever done that before?" Bishop asked the handler, who shook his head adamantly.

"Never. Cosmo knows his job, and he's the best tracker I've ever had. I don't understand it." He bent to his dog, murmuring reassuringly to the trembling animal.

McDaniel shook his head as well, baffled, and told those of his people that had been standing by to continue searching without the aid of a dog. To Bishop, he said, "If you have any special expertise to offer, now would be the time."

"Yes," Quentin agreed, staring at Bishop challengingly. "Now would be the time."

"I don't know the terrain here as well as the rest of you," Bishop said, "but I'll do my best. Quentin, perhaps you could show me the layout of these gardens?"

"And I'll go talk to the father again," McDaniel said with a sigh.

Quentin watched the cop stride back toward the main building, then said to Bishop in a lowered voice, "Okay, so no dog-and-pony show for the locals. I get that. But whatever abilities I may have aren't telling me a damned thing, and I'm hoping yours can be a lot more help in finding this little girl."

"Telepathy won't help," Bishop said, his own voice low. "But there's another little knack I have that might."

"What is it?"

Without answering that specifically, Bishop said, "I need a high place, somewhere I can see as much of the surrounding area as possible."

"The main building has an observation tower. Will that do?"

"Lead the way."

The "tower" was little more than a cupola jutting up from the roof on one side of the Victorian-style building and housing a twenty-five-foot circular room whose shutters were left wide open in summer.

Since The Lodge was centered in a sprawling valley, it was possible to see for miles from this vantage point.

Bishop was silent until they reached the top of the stairs and the tower, then said, "I've always believed animals are sensitive to things most people are oblivious to, things beyond even their own keenest senses."

"Unfortunately, they can't tell us what's upset them. Or are you telepathic with animals as well as people?"

"People only, I'm afraid. And not much more than half of them. You know these extra senses of ours are as limited as the usual five."

"I don't know a whole hell of a lot about the subject, if you want the truth," Quentin said, moving to the side of the tower that overlooked the garden area. "Not much science on it, at least that I could find, and I wasn't very interested in most of the cockeyed theories masquerading as science."

"Join the SCU, and I can guarantee you'll learn everything science and experience can tell us about psychic abilities. Your own and others'."

"I'm not what you'd call a team player."

"That I can live with," Bishop said, joining him and gazing out over the gardens. "I need a seer, Quentin, and they're rare."

"I don't
see
anything. I just know things sometimes," Quentin finally admitted. "Stupid, useless stuff, mostly. That the phone is about to ring. That it's going to rain. That I'll find the keys I lost in some unlikely spot."

"But sometimes," Bishop said, "you know where an important piece of evidence will be found. Or precisely which questions to ask of which suspects. Or which line of an investigation is going to be a dead end."

"You've been reading my file," Quentin said after a moment.

"Of course. You're one of the few psychics I've been able to find already in law enforcement—and the only one already within the FBI."

Quentin glanced at him, then shrugged. "I've never been able to use my ability as an investigative tool.

It's never been under my control in any sense."

"We'll teach you how to exert whatever control is possible. Teach you how to focus and channel your abilities. How to use them to aid an investigation."

"Will you? Can
you
do it?"

Bishop smiled faintly at the direct challenge, but rather than answering looked out over the valley and put all his concentration into opening up and strengthening his "normal" five senses. It was like having a blurry image snap suddenly into focus, while in the background faint sounds became louder, clearer, and he could smell the roses far below.

He wasn't about to admit to Quentin that the term coined for what he was doing was using his "spider sense," not after the other man's mocking reference to comic books.

"Bishop—"

"Wait." He reached out farther, and heard bits of conversation from the searching officers and hotel employees, words and phrases, disjointed and unimportant. Beneath the scents of roses and other flowers and freshly mown grass, he caught the savory odors of cooking from the hotel's kitchen, and someone's tangy perfume or aftershave, and the warm, dusty scents of horses and hay and leather. The razor-sharpness of what he saw blurred as though a zoom lens sought distant objects and struggled to bring them into focus.

Bishop pushed harder, reached farther.

The colors washed into one another, the scents blended unpleasantly into a thick miasma that caused his stomach to churn, and the sounds and voices he heard were a cacophony pounding inside his head—

"—
or we could check down by the creek
—"

"
—
of course I wasn't flirting with him
—"

"—
the guest in the Orchid Room needs
—"

"—
empty stables she might have
—"

"—
only a matter of time before we have to drag the streams and lake—"

"Daddy? Where are you? I'm afraid
—"

It's coming.

"Bishop!"

He looked down at Quentin's hand on his arm, then at the other man's face, his vision blurry for a heartbeat or two before it cleared. And he could hear only the distant sounds that were normally audible from this height. Smell only the distant, pleasant scents of a summer afternoon.

He didn't have to ask to know that he had been too still and too silent for too long, and had to mentally shrug off the lingering chill he felt. He wondered if he had been able to tune in to his surroundings with such unusual strength because there was, as Quentin believed, something different about this place.

The coldness Bishop had sensed was at least an indication that he might be right.

But there was little time to ponder that.

"Can you ride?" he asked, unsurprised by the slightly hoarse sound of his own voice.

Frowning, Quentin said, "Yeah, I can. What the hell did you just do?"

"I... tuned in to this place. Let's go."

Quentin followed, still frowning, and within ten minutes they were aboard two of the hotel's horses and following one of the trails that wound up into the mountains. Bishop led the way, not saying much but intent, concentrating, as though listening to some inner voice that was guiding him.

Quentin wasn't really surprised to see that Bishop rode well; he had a strong hunch that the other man was the sort who would master whatever he chose to no matter how much effort or time was involved.

Which, Quentin knew, undoubtedly included his psychic abilities.

But what
had
he done back in the tower? Whatever it was, it had been an actual, physical effort; his eyes had dilated so much that for an instant, gazing into them, Quentin had thought of ice rimming a deep, black pool. Unsettling, to say the least. And what had Bishop said—that he had tuned in to this place?

What the hell was that supposed to mean?

He urged his horse up beside the other man's despite the narrowness of the trail, and said, "Do you know where she is, or are we just out for a nice afternoon ride?"

"I know where she is," Bishop replied calmly.

"How?"

"I heard her."

Quentin digested that for a moment. "From the tower? You heard her way up there?"

"Yes."

Quentin glanced back at the considerable distance they had already covered, then said almost involuntarily, "Bullshit."

"The mind," Bishop said, "is a remarkable tool. And so are the senses. The usual five, plus whatever extra ones we're lucky enough to have."

"Bishop, you're out of your mind—and
all
your senses."

"We'll see."

Quentin dropped back but continued to follow Bishop, telling himself that he was just humoring a lunatic. But the quiet voice in his own mind that had so often told him where to look or what to ask or what would happen next was telling him that little Belinda was going to be found, and that it would be because Bishop had, somehow, heard her.

"Belinda?"

"Go away," she mumbled, blinking in the brightness of Quentin's flashlight. She was squeezed back into a corner near the old rock fireplace, but seemed to do her best to make herself draw even farther away, to make herself smaller. "Don't hurt me." Her voice was thin and shaky, the plea ending in a hiccuping sob.

"It's okay, Belinda, you're safe now. We're going to take you back to your parents." Quentin tried to make his own voice soothing, but the child's terror was palpable and he dared not reach out for her.

"Let me try," Bishop said.

Quentin gave way willingly; there was very little space inside the ramshackle building that might once have been a house of sorts, and between them he and Bishop were probably looming over the sobbing child, he thought. She was obviously dazed and confused, though appeared unhurt barring a small cut on her forehead.

What Quentin couldn't understand was how she had managed to get way up here, much farther from The Lodge than a child her age should have been able to travel in the time allowed. Under her own power, at least.

"It's okay, Belinda," Bishop said, softly repeating Quentin's assurances. But he didn't hesitate to reach out and gather the child into his arms.

To Quentin's surprise, the little girl not only didn't resist or protest, but actually visibly relaxed, and stopped crying. She even looked a little sleepy, as if exhaustion had caught up with her.

"Let's get her out of here," Bishop said.

Quentin radioed the other search teams that Belinda had been safely found, and Bishop handled her slight weight easily as he carried her before him on his horse back down the mountain.

As relieved as he was that the child had been safely found, and impressed though he was with the way Bishop had been able to do that, what interested Quentin the most was Belinda's response to the other man. With those pale eyes and the angry scar down his left cheek, his didn't seem a face that would inspire confidence in a terrified little girl, yet from the moment he had touched her, she had seemed perfectly trusting and content in his arms.

"You're good with kids," Quentin noted as they rode the last half mile back to The Lodge. "Any of your own?"

Bishop glanced down at the dark-haired girl nestled against him, and Quentin saw a flicker of pain, quickly gone.

"No," Bishop replied, "none of my own."

"I guess some people just have the knack. I never did. I like kids okay and all, but they don't warm up to me quickly."

"She's been through a lot," Bishop said.

Quentin didn't bother to say that it wouldn't have made much difference in how she reacted to him.

Instead, he glanced at Belinda's drowsy face and lowered his voice to say, "You heard her all the way up there; I assume you can hear her now. What happened to her?"

"She doesn't remember." Bishop's voice was low as well.

"What, nothing?"

"Nothing after waking up this morning. She doesn't remember the earlier ride with her father or the beginning of the picnic." Bishop paused, then added, "Not so uncommon after a head in-jury."

"No, but... how did she get that injury? And how the hell did she travel miles across a valley and up into the mountains in hardly more than a couple of hours?"

"I don't know."

"No hoofprints around that old shack, except for those our horses made. No tire tracks. Hell, no footprints that I saw—not even hers."

"Yeah, I noticed that."

Since they had nearly reached The Lodge, Quentin dropped the subject for the time being. But after Belinda had been safely returned to her overjoyed parents and all the questions and exclamations and thanks had been dealt with—with amazing discretion and creative evasiveness on Bishop's part—he brought it up again.

The two men sat at a fairly isolated table in a shady section of one of the verandas with a couple of cold beers—compliments of The Lodge.

"You noticed there were no footprints up there. I think we both believe she couldn't have gotten all that way on her own. So what do you think happened to Belinda?"

"I don't know. Without evidence of any kind, there's no way
to
know."

"I'm not asking what you know. I'm asking what you think. What you feel. I saw your face when we got to that old shack up there, and it didn't take a telepath to know you were picking up something you didn't like."

After a moment, Bishop said, "It was an old building, and like most old buildings it held a lot of...