A Deadly Web (16 page)

“Nobody has said that’s the plan,” he reminded her. “Just for now. While we try to figure
out
a plan.”

“We can’t figure out a plan if we don’t completely understand what’s going on around us. Would it be better to stay here? Go somewhere else? What does Duran expect us to do?”

“And how do you propose we figure out that last one?”

“Test the boundaries,” Tasha said.

“By dangling you out on a hook like bait? I don’t think so.”

“I didn’t suggest I go alone. In fact, he’d be suspicious if I did. But we’ve been inside all day and well into the evening; nobody would be surprised if we took a stroll along a very well-lit sidewalk a couple of blocks to a pleasant restaurant.”

“We ordered takeout.”

“They have bands every night, sometimes really good ones. And they have desserts people come from miles around to try out. We walk down there for dessert and music. Makes perfect sense.”

“I don’t like it, Tasha.”

“I didn’t expect you would. It’s easier to guard something you can keep inside and . . . unexposed.”

He opened his mouth to respond, but whatever he’d been about to say never got said when a buzzing sound from his jacket drew his quick attention. His jacket had been hanging over the back of the bar stool where he’d sat earlier.

Brodie rose from the coffee table and went to his jacket, then came about halfway back to Tasha and remained on his feet as he opened the cell phone.

Not, Tasha noted, an expensive phone, but a very simple, almost stripped-down version. Was it what she’d heard characters on TV call a “burner” phone? One meant to be used once and then tossed?

“Yeah?” Brodie answered. He listened for several moments, frowning, his gaze on Tasha.

“That’s a dangerous way to test a theory,” he said finally. “Yeah, I know, but— Okay, if you’re that convinced. But it has to be her choice.” His frown deepened as he stared at Tasha. “Yeah, reasonably sure. There’s a restaurant a couple blocks down she wants to walk to. No, I couldn’t bring a gun into this building, the security’s too good. Okay. Yeah, I know where that is.” He looked at his watch. “Fifteen minutes. Tell her not to be late.”

He closed the phone, and then immediately popped the battery out, then turned and went down the hall to the condo’s powder room. Tasha heard the toilet flush. When Brodie came back, he dropped the now-useless phone into her kitchen trash can.

“You flushed the battery? Why?”

“We usually just toss them and keep walking,” he answered readily. “But this is where you live, and I don’t want to take the chance that Duran’s side hasn’t figured out a way to track a specific battery. Power sources emit signatures, so who knows?”

Tasha was curious about several things. “Can’t cell phone calls be picked up by someone with the right kind of equipment? I saw that on a TV show.”

“Not our cell phones. We’ve modified them extensively. No Internet access, no GPS, no emergency button,
and they transmit and receive on rare, virtually unused frequencies. Otherwise, they’re just plain old cell phones intended to be used for one call and only one call.”

“They call that a burner, right? Without all the modifications, I mean.”

Brodie nodded, then said briskly, “Okay, you get your wish, if you still want to go out. I don’t know if you want to change or just put on shoes, but we’re about to leave here and head for that restaurant with the music and desserts.”

“I want to change,” Tasha said, getting up from the couch. Then she paused, looking at him. “What is it we’re really doing?”

Brodie’s face was even more impassive than usual, and in his mind that ocean she could see so quickly and easily was very calm and very deep. “If I told you, it could affect . . . the outcome. Just get changed, Tasha, okay?”

She still had questions but went into her bedroom to get changed into something less casual. It wasn’t a dressy kind of restaurant, so she settled on keeping the jeans but switching to a pretty, lightweight sweater—winter in Charleston really wasn’t cold, even the nights—and exchanging the dorm socks for warm socks and running shoes.

Because you never knew. Given what was going on in her life right now,
and
the fact that Brodie and whoever had called him obviously had something other than a casual stroll in mind, it wasn’t all that farfetched to consider the possibility of having to run for her life.

She brushed her hair quickly, then came back out in the living room to find Brodie shrugging into his jacket.
“Directional microphones,” she said. “I saw that on TV too. Couldn’t someone be outside listening?”

“All your windows have blinds,” he said, almost as if he’d expected her to ask the question. “They help prevent the glass from vibrating. No vibration, no way to listen in from outside. Aside from that, it’s also security glass.”

She blinked. “It is?”

“Yeah. Not bulletproof, but thicker than normal. Helps with soundproofing with traffic so close outside. That’s probably why the condo designers chose it.”

“So even harder for anyone outside to hear us.”

Brodie nodded. “You really picked an excellent building. If Duran and his goons were garden-variety thugs, they’d never get in here. Unfortunately for us all, they’re considerably better than that, and so far we haven’t found a security system they haven’t been able to bypass.”

“A guard with an Uzi outside my door?” she suggested, not really serious.

“Remember what I said about the nonpsychic they were somehow able to hypnotize? We believe they’ve been experimenting with mind control, using the psychics working for them. And they’ve clearly had some success at it. So we’re fairly careful who we arm and when.”

Tasha suddenly wished she’d chosen a thicker sweater. “Great. That’s just great.”

“Your extra senses and your instincts are your best protections,” Brodie told her seriously. “Always listen to them. If your instincts are telling you to run,
do
it.” He glanced down at her shoes approvingly, then offered his arm. “Shall we?”

She took his arm a bit gingerly, muttering half under her breath, “I have a feeling I’m not going to enjoy the music nearly as much as I thought I would.”

“Sorry about that. Don’t take your purse unless you want to, but you’ll need your keycard for the building.”

“Travel light?” she said, snagging the keycard from the table in the hallway where she always dropped it and her purse and sliding the card into her back pocket.

“Usually not a bad idea.” He paused at her door and looked down at her seriously. “There may come a moment when you’ll have to decide to leave everything behind except what you can easily carry. And it’s not a bad idea to have that figured out in advance. Just in case.”

“Right,” Tasha said somewhat hollowly. “Just in case.”

—

“Aren’t we taking a big chance, being here just now?” Miranda Bishop said to her husband. They were sitting in a cozy booth in a dim back corner of the restaurant, and since a new band was busy setting up, it was fairly quiet in the spacious room.

Well, except for bangs and thumps and the occasional discordant note of some instrument.

“A slight chance,” Bishop admitted. His veiled gaze was on a couple who had just come in and were being shown to an equally semisecluded booth in the corner opposite them. The man was tall and dark and powerfully built; he moved in a way Miranda had come to recognize in men of action, with every muscle fine-tuned and under his complete control, ready to react to any sort of threat instantly.

The woman was tall and lovely, with a figure most any other woman would envy and dark hair that showed a red glint here and there under the low lighting of the restaurant. She didn’t move with quite the ease of her companion, but neither did she appear to be jumpy or nervous.

“Is it my imagination,” Miranda murmured after sipping her drink, “or is she handling all this pretty well?”

“I’d say pretty well. But even having watched those goons break into her condo, so far the only real threat she’s faced has been in her mind. Or, rather, in his. I don’t think it’s quite real to her yet. And won’t be, until she faces real physical danger.”

“Is that why we’re here?”

Bishop looked at his wife and smiled. “No. In just a minute, you and I are going to slip out that side door over there and leave. Before Brodie has the chance to spot me. He would not be happy to see me.”

“Then why are we here at all?”

“We can’t use our extra senses or even amplify the normal five, but we can still use those senses. I wanted to see those two together. Try to . . . get the measure of them.”

“You’ve already met Brodie.”

“Yeah. But my bet is that something’s changed since he became Tasha Solomon’s Guardian.”

“And you want to know whether that’ll prove to be a strength or a weakness.”

“I can’t know for sure without using senses I can’t use, at least for the moment.”

“But there’s that profiler training and experience,” she said.

“Coming in handy,” Bishop admitted, still watching the couple intently and yet obliquely, making sure his gaze wasn’t fixed on them for too long.

Long enough for one or both of them to feel it.

“So what do you see?” Miranda was also a profiler, but Bishop had been at this game quite a bit longer than she had. Besides, she always found it fascinating to watch him work.

“A man born to be a guardian, a caretaker—and the armed watchman at the door. And a strong woman who has felt fear, but isn’t entirely convinced she can’t take care of herself no matter what comes at her.”

“I’d agree with that assessment. And so?”

“I’m wondering what kind of team they’ll make. Unfortunately, without seeing them work together
and
without use of our abilities for the time being, there’s really no way to be sure. I’d hoped I’d see something that might tell me how Brodie, at least, is going to react when he finds out we’re still in Charleston and a
lot
more involved in this than he planned for us to be at this early stage.”

“Something we’re not alerting him to just yet.”

“I think we need to bring along some hard information to that meeting.”

“Peace offering?”

“Well, something to convince him he can not only trust us, but that we can help a lot more by getting into the war now. I really don’t think this is the time to hold back any of the assets.”

“The endgame is a lot closer than they realize?”

“Yeah. A lot closer.”

“As if we didn’t have enough trouble with serial killers,” Miranda said, but she slid from the booth, her hand in her husband’s, and followed him out a side door, waving cheerily to the waiter they had already paid and tipped for their meal.

Just a couple of steps out the door, Bishop paused and looked at his wife. “Maybe it’s knowing damned well I’ve lost psychics who could have tried to reach out to me when they were being abducted. Maybe it’s being a profiler and knowing only too well that there are monsters in this, deadly ones, and they won’t stop until somebody stops them. Either way, we have to put the pieces together and figure out what’s going on. And fast.”

Realizing, Miranda said, “You believe there’s still a chance to save at least some of the abducted psychics, don’t you?”

“I have to believe that.”

She nodded back toward the table no longer in their line of sight. “Even though their experience, maybe decades of it, tells them lost psychics stay lost?”

“Even though.”

“So we check out the place Henry McCord was restoring. And we check out the house waiting patiently for Grace Seymore to return. And if we’re very lucky or very good, we’ll find something useful.”

“Exactly.”

“Well,” Miranda said, “I’ve learned never to bet against you, especially when it comes to getting into the minds of the bad guys. But we
have
been up for nearly
forty-eight hours. I think we need a good night’s sleep if we expect to be any good at all, to anyone.”

Bishop looked at her with a smile very few people ever saw. “One more stop to make. She’s going to be mad as hell about it—but she won’t betray us, to Brodie or anyone else.”

“Because?”

A low laugh escaped him. “Because she’s keeping secrets on top of secrets on top of secrets. And I’d back her against Duran any day. Probably the most valuable operative this side has. I only hope their leader realizes it.”

“Now this one I’ve
got
to meet,” Miranda said.

Tasha said, “I gather that quick stop you made two steps into an alley just before we got here was to get a weapon?” She kept her voice low.

“I’ll get rid of it before we go back to your condo,” he said. “But I was advised to be armed just in case.”

“Obviously by someone you trust.”

He nodded, but didn’t offer an explanation. Not that she had really expected him to.

“Okay,” Tasha said. “We’re here. Nice drinks and desserts. Nice band playing soothing stuff instead of rock. A lot of my neighbors appear to have decided to while away an hour or two here.”

It was true; quite a few people had greeted Tasha when they had come in, though Brodie had made sure they hadn’t lingered long enough for introductions.

“Is that usual?” Brodie asked, casually sipping his drink.

“It’s not unusual. As far as I know. I mean, I’m not usually here on a Sunday evening.” She felt an odd little shock then as she realized she had met Brodie only that morning.

It felt like a lifetime ago.

She braced herself mentally. “I know we didn’t come here for the drinks or desserts or the music. So . . . what’s the dangerous way to test somebody’s theory?”

“You don’t have to do this, Tasha.”

“Tell me what it is.” She kept her voice light. “Then I’ll tell you if I want to do it.”

He looked at her for a long, steady moment, then nodded. “Okay. I noticed this morning that when you use your abilities, you close your eyes.”

“I always have,” she said. “At least, I learned to pretty young. It’s hard enough to sort through all the voices without having . . . visual clutter too.”

“What happens if you don’t close your eyes?”

“That depends on where I am. And who’s around me. A place like this, I’d probably see what you see. The people around us. I’d just be hearing their thoughts in my head. It’s confusing, and sometimes I get dizzy and
have
to close my eyes.”

Brodie was frowning.

“That’s what you want me to do? Use my abilities but keep my eyes open? Why? What’s the theory we’re testing?”

“I still don’t want to influence you,” he said finally.
“But if you’re willing, open up all your senses. Without closing your eyes. It might help to start out looking at something very specific. Not a person.” He looked around briefly. “Maybe that tapestry on the wall over there. It’s just color and pattern, not really any shapes.”

“Never tried that before. Okay.” Tasha had to brace herself even more, but that was more experience than anything else. The dizziness she had suffered in the past had made her physically ill, far worse than just a headache or weariness.

She had to turn her head only a little to focus her gaze on the tapestry, and Brodie was right, it was a sort of wash of colors, soft rather than bright, with no discernible shapes. So she fixed on that, just sort of let her eyes relax in a way she couldn’t explain—and then opened up that other sense.

A cacophony of voices at first, then whispers as she gained some control, and then she began to sort through them so that she was actually getting words, phrases, bits of sentences.

. . . I still don’t know why she wanted to go out tonight . . .

. . . hate Mondays, just hate them, and tomorrow’s gonna be even worse than usual . . .

. . . man, this band sucks . . .

. . . people would think I’m crazy if I said anything . . .

. . . I deserve another dessert, don’t I, even if it’ll mean longer on the treadmill tomorrow . . .

. . . it’s just the nightmares, I could handle the rest, but . . .

. . . I know he’s cheating on me, I just know he is . . .

. . . just don’t get this hide-in-plain-sight shit . . .

Tasha.

She sucked in a breath and let it out slowly, staring at the tapestry but recognizing his thoughts among the others.

You know it’s me?

“Yes,” she said softly out loud. “People’s voices sound the same in my head. I’ll always recognize yours.”

I’m glad. Tasha, can you turn down the voices in your head? Like turning down the volume on a TV?

That was a new thought.

“I have no idea,” she murmured.

Try,
he said in her mind.

Because she couldn’t think of another way, she visualized a knob, visualized turning it slowly to the left.

The voices softened to whispers.

“It worked,” she said to Brodie, her gaze still fixed on the tapestry. “I just hear whispers now. Almost like background noise. I have a feeling that’s going to come in handy.”

“All right.” This time, he spoke out loud, but quietly. “Now, if you think you can do it without making a sound, slowly begin to look around the room. Look at the people.”

She wondered why he thought she would make a sound, but as soon as her gaze slid over one older couple sitting at their table smiling at the music and then to the next table—Tasha heard her breath catch.

Brodie reached out and covered one of her hands with his. “Tell me what you see,” he said, still quiet.

“It’s . . . two women from my condo building,” she whispered. “But . . . they aren’t alone.”

“What else do you see?”

“Shadows.” She was still whispering. “Behind them. Looming over them. Not their shadows. Not normal shadows. Distorted. Creepy. I have to warn—”

“No.” His hand tightened on hers. “Listen to me, Tasha. Keep looking around the room. Look at other people. Don’t look at anyone too long, just a few seconds. But try to see everyone.”

She did as he told her, forcing herself to look from table to table, to see the people who looked normal.

And the ones who had shadows behind them or beside them or seemingly . . . moving in and out of them, a sight that made her skin crawl. She kept looking around the room. All the way around. Until she reached Brodie.

Thank God, he didn’t have a shadow anywhere near him, just a frown of concern on his face.

Tasha knew her hand was cold. She felt cold to her marrow.

“Okay,” she whispered. “Okay. Can I—”

“Close your eyes,” Brodie said immediately. “Raise your shields.”

She’d never been so happy to obey an order in her life. Still, even with her shields up, the voices gone, it took her several seconds to work up the courage to open her eyes again.

She didn’t look around the restaurant, she just looked at Brodie.

“What the hell,” she said, “does that mean?”

“You didn’t see shadows near everyone?”

“No. No, but . . . almost everyone with a shadow is someone . . . near me. In the neighborhood. In my condo building, or one of the other buildings close by. Where I volunteer. Or they work in the neighborhood. Some are . . . people I talk to almost every day, even if it’s just to say hi to. That couple at the table near the band. The girl works at the coffee shop across from my condo. She gets my order almost every morning. But . . . the young man she’s with doesn’t have a shadow.”

“Just a casual date, probably. They’d have to keep up appearances.” Brodie’s voice was grim.

“John, what are you talking about?”

“The women from your condo; how long ago did they move in?”

“The same week as me,” she said numbly. “The super said he’d been lucky, that almost as soon as a condo was ready, there was someone interested in moving in. Every condo is occupied now. Do you think—”

“No.” Brodie shook his head. “Not all of them. Not everyone. Just like not everyone here tonight. But . . .”

“But all around me. They’ve been all around me from the beginning, haven’t they? Watching me? I didn’t escape them when I left Atlanta. I’m exactly where they wanted me to be.”

—

Murphy had completed three slow patrols around the neighborhood, the last one when she’d known Brodie and Tasha Solomon were in the restaurant, and she did
not
like how unsettled she felt. She had tapped in to Tasha just far enough and long enough to get more than the gist of what was going on.

And even though she was no longer in mental or emotional contact with Tasha, she knew she felt nearly as shaken as the other woman did. Because this was something new, something different, and Murphy didn’t understand the tactic.

Feeling that way, rare as it was, usually drove her to ground until she could figure out what was going on. But this time, she had a source.

At least, she hoped so.

She checked her watch, scowled briefly, and then slipped into an alleyway that provided a shortcut. Hardly ten minutes later, she was slipping into the unlocked back door of one of the rare industrial buildings in the area. Hulking machinery loomed silent in the mostly dark building, but she quickly found her way to a security spotlight that wouldn’t be visible to anyone who wasn’t actually in the building.

She stepped to the edge, just far enough into the light to let herself be seen, and said, “That’s a dandy shield you two have.”

“It does come in handy,” Bishop admitted as he and Miranda stepped into the light a few feet away.

“It’s you,” Miranda said, more in understanding than surprise. “Noah said we’d crossed paths with some of the operatives in your organization, but I didn’t expect to see you.”

“That’s sort of the point,” Murphy said, but more in amusement than sarcasm.

“True enough.”

Murphy looked between them, then settled her gaze on Bishop. “Behind that dandy shield, want to tell me how you knew about this place before we did?”

“I was right?”

“In spades. I suggested that Brodie utilize Tasha’s talents in a little test of a theory. And it worked; she saw them. Way too many of her nice, friendly neighbors with unnatural, distorted, and usually invisible shadows attached to them. So
she’s
totally freaked out.”

“Can’t say that I blame her.”

Murphy nodded. “So answer the question. How did you know?”

“Didn’t know for sure,” Bishop admitted. “Some of us have developed something we informally call spider senses, because they let us know if something is wrong, off—even behind our shields, though what we get in that case tends to be muffled. When we can use the spider senses, our normal senses are enhanced, even though we still don’t read as psychics.”

“Okay. And so?”

“The whole neighborhood just felt wrong, from the moment we were even close to the area. Off-kilter. I took a guess, given how badly you say Duran wants Tasha Solomon, and given that he knows about your standard security practices—right?”

“Yeah, he knows. Like we know his.” Murphy nodded. “Which is why he might try something different when his target is especially important to him.”

“It’s pretty damned elaborate,” Bishop noted. “And
uses up a lot of manpower. Either he’s put a disproportionate number of his assets here around Tasha, or else their organization really
is
huge.”

“Either way is not good for our side.” Murphy frowned at the two of them. “Appreciate the theory and the intel, but you shouldn’t be here. If Brodie found out, he’d put you on his very long list of people he doesn’t trust. And that’s not what we want.”

“I know. But I also know something I didn’t when I first met with Brodie.”

“Let me guess.” Murphy’s voice was still grim. “One or more of the psychics you’ve been monitoring has disappeared.”

“That’s a very good guess.”

Murphy made a sound that was half amused and half angry. “It just figures. You wouldn’t be this close to the action after you were told we needed another ace more than we needed another soldier unless the stakes were very high. Very high for you, personally. How many?”

“Four in the last few weeks, two of them very recent.”

“Shit. And from here, in Charleston?”

“Both the recent abductees lived in the area.”

“Strong psychics?”

“In different ways. Two born, two triggered in their late twenties. A clairvoyant, a medium, a seer—and a telekinetic.”

“Rare birds, telekinetics.”

“Yeah. She’s one of those triggered by physical trauma, a head injury. Her control tends to slip when her emotions run high, but she was working on that.”

Murphy hunched her shoulders, then sighed. “Bishop, I know your reputation for success in your work, but this . . . We don’t get them back. If the other side has them, they’re gone.”

“I can’t accept that. Not without doing everything I possibly can to find them.”

“I was afraid you were going to say something like that.”

“I think Duran knows anyway, Murphy.”

“About you?”

“Yeah. All my senses are muffled and I can still feel the tension, especially around Tasha Solomon. All around her. I don’t know what his plans for her were, but between us all, we’ve managed to somehow upset them. I don’t think it’s just me, but I’m betting I’m the last person he wanted to get involved in this.”