Hostage (15 page)

The Rottweiler, still on his feet, was looking at the door but didn’t seem at all disturbed. He lifted his gaze to Callie, and if a dog designed by nature to look fearsome could look serene, he did.

“Huh,” Callie murmured. She kept her gun in her hand but didn’t hesitate to open the cabin’s door.

They pushed it wider open, the three large dogs, rushing inside so close together they nearly tangled in the doorway, and they would have run over Cesar if he hadn’t backed up several quick steps. And they didn’t stop until they had wedged themselves into the farthest corner of the main room of the cabin, beside the couch where Luther sat. All three were shaking visibly.

“What the hell?” he said.

“They’re terrified.”

“Yeah, I can see that. You don’t have to know much about dogs to see that. But terrified of what?”

Callie looked outside for only a moment, then closed the door and returned her weapon to its accustomed place. She came over to where Luther was and sat down on the end of the coffee table near his propped foot, facing the dogs. She didn’t say anything for a moment, just leaned forward with her elbows on her knees and hands linked loosely between them.

“Hey, Cleo,” she said quietly. “Remember me?”

All three of the dogs had been avoiding eye contact, but when Callie spoke, the largest of them finally looked at her and gradually stopped trembling.

“The one you met out hiking?” Luther guessed, keeping his voice low and casual.

“Yeah. Her name’s on her tag. I’m guessing the other two as well. It’s okay, Cleo. It’s okay now.” Her voice was, somehow, infinitely reassuring, something even Luther felt.

The dog took a step toward her, then another. And finally laid her head on Callie’s knee. The other two dogs watched, their trembling finally easing as Callie stroked Cleo’s head.

“Think Jacoby drove them away?” Luther asked.

“Maybe. Or maybe they ran away.”

“Because he was cruel?”

Callie frowned, then shook her head a little and said, “Wait.”

She continued to stroke Cleo, gradually working her way over the big dog until she’d completed a pretty thorough examination. By then, the other dogs had ventured closer, and she went through the same routine with each. Calm and gentle, but thorough. By the time she was done, the dogs were relaxed, two of them lying on a rug near the fireplace and the one male sitting at the end of the coffee table having his ears gently rubbed by Callie.

“This is Ace,” she told Luther after examining the tag on the dog’s collar. “The one beside Cleo is Lucy. I’m guessing they’re littermates, obviously mixed breeds. And I can’t find a single sign that any one of them has ever been abused.”

“Could be verbal,” he noted.

But Callie was shaking her head. “These dogs have been cared for, and I mean
really
cared for. They’ve been well fed, well groomed, and obviously socialized. Whatever terrified them, it didn’t have anything to do with people. At least . . . nothing to do with how people have treated them in the past.”

“Then what?”

“Maybe . . . the negative energy. Cesar was sensitive to it. If they are too, and they’ve been with Jacoby since he got here . . .”

“Would negative energy affect dogs? I mean—negatively?”

“No idea. Their brainwaves are different, so I’m guessing if there was an effect, it wouldn’t be the same as with us.”

“You said the dog—Cleo—acted friendly and normal when you and Cesar met her before.”

“So what’s happened since then?” Callie finished slowly. “What’s different now? Just that energy that we know of. Stronger. Darker. Maybe the dogs were okay as long as Jacoby was. As long as he was able to fight off whatever the negative effects have been.”

“Like shooting at people?”

“You said the dogs chased you for a bit, and I heard them; when did he send them after you? While he was still shooting?”

Thinking back, Luther said, “No. I’d managed to get at least a hundred yards away before I heard the dogs barking. Now that I think about it, they didn’t come very far after me. I think—I remember a whistle. He must have called them back.”

Callie nodded. “The hunters said he did that, whistled his dogs back before they were out of sight of the cabin.”

“So he was just making a point.”

“Probably. But my point is that the dogs were still obeying him then, still willing to return to him. I’d bet next year’s pay they won’t go anywhere near him now.”

“You’re basing that on the idea that the energy you sense is strong enough, you believe, to completely overpower him?”

“I think it’s a reasonable assumption. My only question, still, is whether the energy is centered around that cabin—or around Jacoby. Until today, I was hoping it was the cabin, the area.”

“Because we could have gotten him away from it.”

Callie nodded. “But if it’s centered around the cabin, and that’s what I felt hundreds of yards away from the cabin, then it’s way the hell too big to be anything we could deal with, so now I’m hoping Jacoby is at the center, that rather than find it here, he somehow brought it here with him.”

“And lost control?”

“That fits his behavior. Okay at first, not social but not violent. Puts his fed handlers to sleep and escapes. Takes his time, gets his beloved dogs, makes his way to the cabin he’s made arrangements for earlier, the cabin he believes is safe, losing almost everyone trying to track him in the process. Settling in. Then the fairly rapid escalation, shooting at hunters, at you—and finally scaring off his own dogs. Everything changed, and in less than two weeks.”

Luther let that sink in for a few moments, then said, “Do you think he’ll come after his dogs?”

“No. I think he let them go or drove them off to save them. From himself. And if I’m right about that, then some part of Cole Jacoby realized he was becoming dangerous, that there was something in him he could no longer control, or couldn’t control for much longer.”

“And now it’s got him.”

“Probably.”

“Negative energy?”

“I know how it sounds, believe me. But . . . I felt it, Luther. Some energy is just power. Force. But some energy is more than that. I can’t explain it. I don’t know if anyone could. But I know what I felt.”

He waited, looking at her.

“Purpose. Strength contained and intensifying, for a reason. Building up to something. Whatever that energy is, wherever it came from, it has a purpose, an end game, a goal. And I can guarantee you we won’t like whatever it wants to do.”

“Okay,” he said finally. “In that case, I think we have two options. We call in major backup, or we get the hell out of here.” He held up a hand when she would have spoken. “I know, your job was to figure out the energy. But I can’t help you do that and, no offense, I don’t think you can do it alone. Not if this stuff is as deadly as you feel it is. Shield or not, you may be even more vulnerable to the energy because you’re a born psychic.”

“It’s a point,” she conceded. “Though I’ve been able to deflect negative energy in the past.”

“But you can’t be sure about this negative energy. That you’d be able to do the same thing. Every energy has a unique signature. And this one could very easily be one that could punch a hole through your shield or otherwise disable or hurt you.”

“It’s possible,” she agreed.

Luther nodded. “The other point is a lot more positive. Jacoby has, so far, shown no signs of wanting to leave the area. Hunters have been warned to avoid him. The area is practically deserted otherwise. So we can be fairly certain no one else is in immediate danger. We can alert the sheriff down in Devil’s Gap, if you think we should, especially after finding that blood. But Jacoby’s here, relatively contained, if only by the isolation and geography of this place. We have no reason to believe he’s going to move out of the area, at least in the short term, so we have no reason to believe we’d be putting anyone else in danger by getting out of here until we can get some help. We need backup, Callie. At the very least, I say you contact Bishop and let him know what’s going on.”

She chewed on her lower lip for a moment, then said, “Well, there’s a danger in that. Up here, I can only reach out to contact Bishop if I drop my shields. Completely. You may not have noticed, but they’ve been up since this morning.”

He was a bit surprised that he hadn’t noticed.

And a bit worried about that, even though he reminded himself that he was new at this telepathic stuff.

“I don’t feel that energy now, here, Cesar doesn’t feel it, and Jacoby’s dogs are calm now, so they don’t feel it either. That tells me that Jacoby isn’t close, and/or that the energy field around him isn’t expanding.”

“Or hasn’t expanded this far.”

She nodded. “But if I drop my shields and reach out to Bishop, no matter how narrow my focus is, I’m not only opening myself up to attack, but sending out positive energy. And positive energy can attract negative energy.”

“He’d know you were here.”

“Oh, I’m pretty sure he already knows I’m here. What he may not know so far is that I’m here because of him and that I’m psychic. Not that I’m certain my shields have kept him out, especially since I haven’t kept them up consistently while I’ve been here. But I think I would have known if that negativity touched my mind, and I think Jacoby simply hasn’t been paying enough attention to consider who or what I am.”

“Seriously?”

“He’s had a lot to deal with, remember. I’d bet he fought as hard as he could to maintain control, and probably lost it a few times for minutes or hours. Until, finally, he lost it for good. Which probably happened just about the time he got his dogs away from the cabin.”

“
What
happened when he lost control?”

“I don’t know. But my guess is something bad. Negative energy needs something to feed off if it’s to grow more intense. The darkest energy comes from evil acts.”
I should tell him. I really should.

“That blood.”

“No way to know for sure. I doubt Jacoby could have caught himself a hunter, and there aren’t many other people up here. Usually hikers, but the weather’s been colder this season, so that’s less likely.”

“But possible. He could have killed someone.”

Why does it seem so wrong to tell him the truth? Because I’m afraid he won’t believe me if I tell him we can’t help her now?

“That’s a big leap to take from a few drops of blood we don’t even know is human.”

“Blood plus increased negative energy I say makes it less of a leap.”

“Point,” she conceded. “If and when he lost control, he could have done almost anything. If the energy has taken or is about to take him over completely, then he’s likely capable of evil acts, even if he isn’t aware of committing them and doesn’t remember them afterward.”

“So you believe whatever personality made Jacoby who and what he was is . . . gone.”

“For good? I don’t know. I’d probably know if I met him face-to-face, but given all the negative energy surrounding him, possibly controlling him, I’m considering that a last-resort confrontation. Until we know what the ultimate agenda is, what’s driving that negative energy and whether it’s feeding off Jacoby or is actually dictating his actions, I don’t think we can be sure of much of anything.”

Luther nodded slowly. “Okay. Well, I made my suggestions. What are yours?”

“Given just the possibilities we know of, pretty much the same. Starting with contacting Bishop.”

“In spite of the risks?”

“I’d rather risk it up here than get down to town first. I don’t want to come down off this mountain without letting Bishop know what the situation is. The potential for danger to the public might be low, but that’s been an assumption based on his past actions, not the current state of Jacoby’s mind. Too many variables now for me even to make an educated guess about what level of threat he poses. To the public. And to us. At the very least, Bishop needs to know for sure that we’re dealing with a hell of a lot more than a bank robber.”

“Agreed. Anything I can do to help?”

To his surprise, Callie nodded. She went over to a cabinet where she kept her first-aid kit and carried it to the kitchen island. She had her back to Luther, and he was surprised again when she returned to sit again on the coffee table and hand him a syringe. There was a clear liquid inside.

“What the hell?”

Soberly, she said, “I want you to watch Cesar. If you see him start to react in any negative way, give me that shot.”

“Callie—”

“If he growls, if the hair stands up along his spine, if he’s staring at me as if I pose a threat, give me the shot. He’ll react before the other dogs will, because he knows me.”

Keep a close eye on me, boy.

Yes. Always.

Luther looked at the syringe in his hand and once again felt a profound sense of unease. “Is this a sedative?”

“No. The last thing I want to do if that negative energy finds mine is go to sleep. That’s leaving a door wide open for it to come in.”

“Then what is this?”

Callie pushed up the loose sleeve of her sweater to expose her upper arm, and pointed to a specific spot. “Just pop it in right here, and hit the plunger. Full dose.”

“Callie—”

“It’s a . . . stimulant. It’ll break the connection with Bishop, slam my shields back into place.”

Surprised, Luther said, “There’s a med that’ll do that? First I’ve ever heard of it.”

“Experimental. The lab people have been testing it, and so far I’m one of the few showing a . . . useful . . . reaction.”

Uneasy, he said, “Are you sure it won’t hurt you?”

“I’m sure that negative energy could hurt me a lot more. I’m trusting you, Luther. If Cesar reacts, give me the shot.”

“Listen, can’t we talk about this?”

“We already have.” She closed her eyes. “Watch Cesar. You’ll know if something bad is happening.”

“Are you sure?”

Callie was silent. And so Luther fixed his gaze on her attentive Rottweiler.

And hoped to hell nothing bad would happen.

* * *

YOU KNOW WHAT
to do. What you have to do. You understand, Luther, don’t you?