Taken (Second Sight) (6 page)

All night, in the darkness and the cold, she had thought of this moment and the thing that she would say to him–a million possibilities. But now–
nothing
.
 

The Chameleon dragged the metal chair over the concrete floor and sat in it as he had yesterday, with its back toward her. She’d moved as close to the wall as she could get.

What had Mac said? Think, Isabelle, think!

“I don’t believe I’ve ever told you,” the Chameleon began, “what a lovely voice you have.”

She stared at him.

Lovely voice?

“When you scream,” he said, reaching down to his belt.

She heard something unsnap.

Oh god. He’s going to start again. Think!

He held up a small, diamond, stud earring for her to see. It twinkled even in the milky light from the dirty windows in the corridor.

“This belonged to–”

“
Who?
” Isabelle yelled, louder than she’d intended. “Your mother?”

The Chameleon frowned disapprovingly at her, as though she’d given the wrong answer in a quiz.

“No,” he said, drawing it out, as though he were trying to be patient. “This is from–”

“Because wasn’t it with your mother that this all began?” Isabelle said, her voice quaking.

The Chameleon cocked his head at her, rotating it so far he looked like his face was spinning.

“
What?
” he said.

“All the sex,” she replied, seeing that the words were having an effect. “Isn’t that what this is all about?” He gripped the earring in his fist. “Because this is sex for you,” Isabelle continued. “Isn’t it? This is how you get off.” The Chameleon, his eyes never leaving her face, slowly stood. “You can’t have actual sex,” Isabelle said.
 

She heard the earring drop into the leather holder at his waist and the cover snap closed. But as he shoved the chair aside, knocking it over, she realized he held something new in his hand. It was a short, black metal stick but as he quickly swung it with a short, chopping motion, it expanded with a loud click.

Uh oh.

His mouth was twisted in a strange grimace that almost made it seem like he would laugh but he didn’t utter a word. Instead he swung the metal rod at her head. Her right elbow came up immediately to parry the blow. The rod glanced off it as the stinging blow jerked her wrist in the cuff.
 
But as she shut her eyes and hid her face behind her bent arm, a sudden blow to the stomach made her grunt. The air rushed from her lungs as pain flooded through her.
 

In quick succession, three more thwacking, biting, painful strikes across her midsection left her completely breathless. She tried to draw her legs up but the cuffs held her feet firm. And though her arm still covered her face, she’d lost all strength, barely able to keep it in place. The room spun wildly but she tried to twist her torso, turn away from him so that she could breathe. But as the rod landed yet again and the searing pain shot upward, the world quickly faded to black.

• • • • •

From the parking lot of the Federal Building, Mac glanced up to the seventeenth floor to where he knew Ben’s office would be. But as the phone rang and he waited for Sharon to pick up, he knew this was a call that Ben couldn’t hear.

Sharon had been with him on the two previous cases, in charge of the command posts as he and Isabelle had pursued clues. But with the weight of the FBI in Los Angeles behind the case, and headquarters in the Federal Building, there was no reason to fly her out.

“Mac,” she said, answering her phone. “I hope there’s good news.”

He had to smile. Direct. To the point. Her expertise was situation management and communication and it showed.

“No,” he said. He paused, reconsidering what he was about to ask. But he’d already made his decision. He plunged on. “I need a favor.”

“Name it,” Sharon replied.

“Don’t be so quick to agree,” Mac cautioned her. “You haven’t heard what I’m asking.”

“All right,” Sharon said. “I’m waiting.”

 
“We’re wading through security video here,” Mac said. “I’m sure you can imagine.”
 

Details of the circumstances of Isabelle’s abduction had flown across the country in seconds when they’d realized she’d been taken under their own noses.

“I can,” Sharon said and Mac knew that was true. She’d come up with the manpower to watch the security videos of the hospital where the last victim had been taken.

“It’s not going to happen in time,” Mac said. “It’s physically impossible.”

“I agree,” Sharon said, keeping her responses short, still waiting.

“I need computer time,” Mac said.

There was a pause on the other end.

“Okay,” she said slowly.

“
Big
computer time,” he said. “Like
super
big. Like the joint project computer developed by the CIA and FBI for Homeland Security. You know the one.”

The two agencies had come under intense fire for not cooperating but had found common ground in the need for a distributed, networked, super-computer that was fast enough and big enough to handle the vast amounts of data that were becoming the bread and butter of the country’s security.

“Homeland Security,” Sharon said. “I know the one or
ones
. Too bad
I
work for the FBI.”

Mac clenched his teeth. He knew what he was asking was huge.

“But I know you, Sharon. You’ve got pull in places most people don’t even know exist.
Everyone
has been through your program. You’ve trained them
all
. I need time on that kind of computer. I can get the data to you on a fiberoptic line.”

“I’m sure you know,” Sharon said slowly, “that homeland
security
is the point of that kind of computer.” Neither would commit to saying a specific network, aware that this very call was likely being logged and analyzed by that very agency. “I’m sure that an abduction by a serial killer wouldn’t qualify.”

Mac stared down at his shoes and paced next to the curb.

“I know you’re right,” he said. “I told you not to be too quick to agree.”

There was a long pause.

“Even so,” she finally said. “I’d be interested in seeing your data. For training purposes, of course.”

Yes
.

“You’ll have it within the hour.”

• • • • •

Prentiss paced quickly in the corridor, glancing into the cell each time he passed it. Isabelle hadn’t moved. She was breathing shallowly and her heartbeat was strong but the water in the face hadn’t woken her. He looked at the puddle under the cot. He’d dumped the entire bottle and, in the end, worried he was suffocating her.

How had something so good turned so bad?

He reversed direction and glanced into the cell.

Wake up!

How had she known about his mother?

He stopped.

Because she’s a psychic!

He knocked himself in the side of the head.
 

Idiot! Of course!
 

He felt his heartbeat slow down and he took a deep breath. Then he laughed and shook his head.
 

Of course she knew about his mother. She’s a psychic.

For a moment, he had panicked, like that dream where you realize you’re naked in the middle of a crowded room.

He laughed again.

A low and anguished moan came from the cell.

Prentiss smiled and turned toward it, in control again.

“Don’t start without me,” he chided.

• • • • •

Isabelle’s stomach felt like it was on fire. Her left arm and wrist ached, dangling somewhere above her. She tried to move her leaden limbs but it was too hard. Even the smallest movement was agony. She couldn’t even open her eyes, the lids much too heavy.
 

Sleep
, she thought. That’s what she needed.

Suddenly, something was pressed into the palm of her right hand. Something sharp.

“No,” she gasped as her eyes flew open and she saw the Chameleon looming over her. “
No
,” she whined. “No, no, no,” she repeated, as though it was the only word she knew. But it was no use. The reading had begun.

As reality and reading blurred, the Chameleon’s face continued to loom. His eyes were fevered, excited, only inches from hers. She could smell his foul breath and realized that she was sitting in a chair. But this wasn’t the church basement with Esme. The image vanished and was replaced by something that looked like the inside of a railroad car or a moving truck. Then that vanished too as thirst overwhelmed her and she begged for her life.

“Please don’t kill me,” she pleaded in a voice that wasn’t her own. An enormous knife blade flashed in front of her, terror stopped her breath, and pain lanced through her leg.

“Stop!” she screamed. “
Stop!
”

In one corner of her mind, Isabelle tried to gain control. This wasn’t her. The pain in her leg wasn’t hers. She was in a jail cell.

“
Is this what your mother did to you?
” she screamed, feeling the blade slice up from the knee. “
Is this how she hurt you?
”

The reading stopped.

Isabelle felt her back hit the metal bed, felt the burning in her throat and lungs. And as the gray of her vision turned to black, she heard the Chameleon as though he were calling to her from a great distance.

“Yes!” he screamed.

Mac knew he would be fired but he was
way
past caring. He’d worked with Special Agent Louis French at various points over the years before Lou had become Director of the FBI Laboratory in Quantico. Mac didn’t know what the hold-up was for the foreign material that had been collected from Angela’s clothes was but he wasn’t going to wait.

“Mac,” Lou said. “It’s good to hear from you.”

Mac stood next to his rental car, a hand on the roof as he stared down at the asphalt.

“Lou,” Mac said, trying to smile and lighten his voice. “It must be lonely at the top if you’re glad to hear from
me
.”

Lou laughed a little.

“I wouldn’t know,” he said. “I’m so far down the bureaucratic food chain I’ll be cleaning toilets next.”

Mac forced himself to laugh.

“Look Lou,” he said. “I’m sure you’ve heard about our situation here in L.A.”

“The Chameleon,” Lou said. “Of course. There’s some talk about most-wanted.”

Normally, that would have made an investigator happy but Mac had no interest. The L.A. field office might nominate the Chameleon and then a committee at the Criminal Investigative Division would review the nomination and it might eventually land in the top ten or be added as an eleventh but Mac didn’t have that kind of time.

“That’s what I hear,” Mac said. “But that’s not why I’m calling.”

“Lab work?” Lou asked.

“Yeah. I’ve got some evidence that’s been there for a week. I don’t know what the hold up is but I need someone to break it loose.”

“A week,” Lou said. “That’s pretty standard. We’ve got two bombings we’re close to nailing down–not counting yours.”

“I need that evidence to get top priority,” Mac said, venturing into forbidden territory.

“I can do that,” Lou said, his voice growing serious. “With the proper authorization.”

“You’ve got it,” Mac lied. “Ben Olivos says to make it happen.”

Ben had said nothing of the sort. Mac had not even asked him, knowing already what the answer would be.

“Ben?” Lou said. “Yeah, you and Ben go back quite a ways.”

“We do,” Mac said, and the truth made this subterfuge all the worse. There was a pause on the other end of the phone. “I’m going to follow this up with paperwork ASAP but this comes directly from Ben. We need to know what that material is, where it can be obtained, and who could have obtained it.” His voice took on the real urgency that he felt. “It can’t happen soon enough, Lou. The city is in a panic. The agents here are smarting from an abduction in their backyard. And we need to make progress; something tangible, something real, that we can use.”

That
I
can use
, Mac thought.
That will lead me to Isabelle.

“Right,” Lou said. “Let me see where we are and I’ll let you know.”

That wasn’t good enough.

“Today,” Mac said, a statement and not a question.

Again there was a pause.

“Today,” Lou finally said. “The toilet cleaning can wait.”

• • • • •

Psychic or no
, Prentiss thought.
This is going to end.

“God damn it!” he swore, as he stared down at Isabelle’s still form. Then he whirled away from her, picked up the chair and threw it through the cell door. “God
damn
it!”

She was utterly perfect and inconceivably horrific all at the same time.
 

Prentiss held his head and paced in a tight circle in the cell.

What to do? What to do?

She had talked about his mother!

He stopped in front of the metal wall and pounded the stenciled cell number with his fists.

My mother!

His mother’s face flashed in front of him, a face he’d managed to push away for
years
. A petite brunette, long hair, her features not unattractive. But her lips quickly curled into something feral, her nostrils flared, and her eyes narrowed to dark slits.

And then the knife slashed toward him.
 

She’d aimed for his balls but he’d moved too quick. Prentiss banged the jail cell wall again as the memory of the knife sinking into his kneecap and slicing up his thigh hit full force.
 

“Mother!” he cried out. “My leg!”

He slid down the wall, his palms scraping over peeling paint, and landed on the floor on his knees. Breathing hard, he squeezed his eyes closed trying to will the memory away.
 

But it was too late. What had begun had to be finished.

Suddenly, the kitchen knife was his, his teenage hands easily wresting the weapon from his smaller opponent. He drove it into her chest.

“
Bitch
,” he yelled, saliva dripping from his mouth. Her eyes went wide and her mouth twisted and gaped at the pain. “
Bitch
,” he breathed, as she fell backward and he landed on top. He watched, unable to turn away, breathing hard, as the light faded from her eyes.